Feds face multistate lawsuit over bid to release low-income assistance records

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program provided services such as direct cash assistance and housing services for 2 million individuals in 2025, with $16 billion provided annually for all 50 states.

by Ryan Knappenberger, Court House News, August 3, 2026

WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of 24 states and Washington, D.C. sued the Trump administration on Monday, challenging a decision authorizing the disclosure of personal information for individuals participating in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

According to the coalition, the Administration for Children and Families issued a notice on June 23 that it would begin releasing such information to any private or public entity the administration chooses starting August 11, to scrutinize blue states’ compliance with the assistance program’s statutory requirements.

Led by New York, the coalition argues in a lawsuit the administration would release assistance recipients’ Social Security numbers, marital status, parentage, immigration status and several other forms of personally identifiable information.

“This administration has used every means at its disposal to erode federal confidentiality protections and deploy unsubstantiated allegations of ‘fraud’ in order to target plaintiff states’ antipoverty programs, [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] included, and particularly to target the benefits those programs provide by law to qualified immigrants and children in immigrant communities,” the coalition writes.

“This court should declare the [System Of Records Notice] unlawful, enjoin its implementation as to the plaintiff states, and restore the protections that Congress enacted for states that participate in [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] and for the millions of individuals who have entrusted their most sensitive information to states under assurances of confidentiality,” the states added.

The coalition is urging Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee, to find the action in clear violation of the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution’s spending clause.

According to the administration’s database, 2,065,848 individuals received assistance in 2025, with 571,265 adults and 1,494,583 children in the program. California was the state with the largest amount of recipients with 794,649, and New York had the second largest population with 351,612.

The assistance program provides over $16 billion each year for all 50 states, D.C., and several territories and tribal governments, and is one of the larges sources of direct assistance to low-income families.

In the June 23 notice, the administration moved to expand its role in overseeing the assistance program and effectively authorized the wholesale sharing of personal records with any federal, state or private entity.

The administration asserted that it possessed the authority to “ensure compliance with all [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] program requirements,” not just those “expressly” entrusted to it by statute.

The coalition — made up of D.C., New York, California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin — argue the administration’s sudden takeover flies against the assistance program’s built-in flexibility.

When Congress created the program in 1996 via the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation, it specifically sought to eliminate excessive bureaucracy and excessive federal oversight that hampered previous child-poverty programs, the coalition argues.

Under the statute, the administration is confided to confirming that states submit complete assistance program plans and to penalize them when the states violate specific statutory requirements in said plans. Further, the statute specifically states that “no officer or employee of the federal government may regulate the conduct of states.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly railed against perceived fraud in federal welfare programs — at times using fraud as a pretext for increased immigration enforcement as it did in Minneapolis — over concerns that immigrants make up an outsized proportion of the programs’ recipients.

New York Attorney General Letitia James slammed the announcement in a statement as wrongful surveillance of states’ antipoverty programs and a “blatant effort to politically target” assistance recipients.

“Instead of helping families struggling with the rising cost of living, this administration is trying to turn antipoverty programs against the people they’re supposed to serve,” James said. “[Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] funds provide critical assistance to help families put food on the table, find safe housing and make ends meet, but this administration is weaponizing [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] to illegally use millions of people’s most private personal information. Programs like [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] are a lifeline for New York families and I won’t let this administration turn them into a tool for targeting the most vulnerable.”

The administration did not respond to a request for comment.