USDA freeze of $129 million in grants to Minnesota renews focus on state’s lawsuit against Brooke Rollins

WASHINGTON – A fight with the Trump administration over the future of the state’s food stamp program remains in court, but Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins did not wait for a judge’s ruling to take punitive action.

On Friday, Rollins announced she would suspend payments of grants totaling about $129 million to the state and to the city of Minneapolis.

The state fought back on Monday with a series of court filings, asking U.S. District Court Judge Laura Provinzino for an injunction or temporary restraining order to stop Rollins from carrying out a threat she issued last month to cut off Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Payments (SNAP) payments to the states.

The USDA has asked Provinzino, a President Joe Biden appointee, to ignore that request. But Robbins did not wait for the court to rule before freezing money to the state.

Related: Did Minnesota’s total SNAP benefits increase from 2019 to 2021?

Robbins wrote Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey that she was forced to take that step because of “failed leadership and abysmal financial management oversight.”

“In fact, rather than confirm your SNAP rolls are accurate to prevent continuing fraud, you asked the courts to block USDA’s directive to recertify the state’s SNAP recipients,” Rollins wrote.

Because Rollins’ dispute with Minnesota centers on the state’s food stamp program, her freezing of $129 million in federal funds is likely to impact SNAP, which serves about 450,000 Minnesotans. But how wasn’t immediately clear,

“We’re communicating with state partners to understand the impacts of such a blanket cut to funding meant for residents most in need,” said Jess Olstad, a spokeswoman for the City of Minneapolis. “What’s abundantly clear is that Minneapolis is the latest target of the Trump administration – willing to harm Americans in service to its perceived political gain.”

A spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) also said the agency, which has authority over SNAP, has “no more clarification or detail” than what was in a USDA letter announcing the funding cutoff.

The USDA, meanwhile, has repeatedly failed to answer requests for information about the money that was frozen by Rollins.  

Minnesota receives almost $900 million dollars from the USDA each year to provide food stamp benefits.  

Other USDA grants provide funding for the National School Lunch Program and food assistance for pregnant women and infants. Still others support farmers and rural development projects. 

Related: Trump administration says it’s withholding social safety net money from Minnesota, 4 others states over fraud concerns

Attorney General Keith Ellison last month sued Rollins and the USDA after she asked Minnesota to recertify the 100,000 households that receive SNAP benefits in Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington and Wright counties.

In a Dec. 16 letter to Walz, Rollins demanded that DCYF implement a new “pilot program” that entailed the recertification of all of those who receive food stamp benefits in the four counties under scrutiny – within 30 days.

In Minnesota, counties administer the SNAP program and, according to Rollins’ directive, each of the counties involved would have to review the eligibility of tens of thousands of recipients – as well as conduct in-person interviews – all within a month. If the counties did not comply, their residents would lose benefits.

Rollins also said that failure to comply with the pilot program “may also affect Minnesota’s continued participation in SNAP.”

Ellison told the court that compliance with Rollins’ demands are “impossible for Minnesota to meet and pose an imminent threat to SNAP benefits in Minnesota.”

He asked the court for “expedited handling and emergency injunctive relief” to halt the freezing of any USDA payments while the case winds its way through the court.  

Dispute over a training video

The state’s lawsuit against the USDA says Minnesota routinely recertifies SNAP recipients, most commonly every 12 months.

The lawsuit also points out that Minnesota’s “error rate” – the percentage of overpayments or underpayments – in 2024 was 8.98%, lower than the national average of 10.93% and lower than the error rates of 33 other states.

The lawsuit also says the Trump administration has “unlawfully targeted” Minnesota because of “personal animosity toward Minnesota politicians, disagreements with policy choices made by the Minnesota legislature, and bias against Minnesota residents of Somali descent.”

But the USDA has made a completely different argument to the court.

It said Minnesota has been swamped by fraud and mentioned the “Feeding Our Future” scandal that involved a pandemic-era USDA program that made rules more flexible to get food to children efficiently. Fraudsters, most of them Somali, took advantage of the relaxed rules to bilk the program of about $250 million.

A key piece of evidence presented by the USDA to the court is a 2023 training video. In that video trainers discuss four families that were disqualified from SNAP and other programs.

A USDA court filing says that throughout the training video, “on multiple occasions, Minnesota’s SNAP Program Manager described clear instances of intentional Program violations … and encouraged training participants to find ways around doing so.”

Not true, said the state. It said the trainers were urging state employees to encourage truthful disclosures from applicants to avoid eligible families from losing benefits that could lead to hunger and homelessness.

“Nowhere in the video do the trainers advise people to ignore or tolerate fraud,” said Jovon Perry, the director of DCYF’s Economic Assistance and Employment Supports Division, in a filing to the court on Monday.

The USDA also told the court that Minnesota’s SNAP error rate was still too high and that states with a county-administered program, like Minnesota, are more likely to have higher rates of fraud, waste and abuse than states that do not delegate administration of SNAP to counties.

The agency also told the court it had sent Colorado a similar demand that it institute a pilot program like the one the USDA sought in Minnesota and the county attorney of Douglas County said it would comply, asking for a 90-day extension of a deadline to do so.

The fate of Minnesota’s food stamp program will now be decided by Provinzino.

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