West Virginia Watch, Charleston Gazette-Mail – A group of West Virginia advocacy and food assistance organizations is calling on Gov. Patrick Morrisey not to comply with a request from the federal government for personal information belonging to recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.
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The 22 organizations — which include the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, the ACLU of West Virginia, Facing Hunger Foodbank and the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition — called the request an “outrageous act of federal overreach” without clear parameters for how the federal government intends to use the personal data.
“West Virginia SNAP recipients share their personal information with the state SNAP agency because they trust it will be used only to help them access food assistance,” the letter says. “That trust is grounded in longstanding state and federal laws and standards that strictly limit how this data can be used. Now, the USDA is attempting to bypass those protections — pressuring states to hand over sensitive data for unrelated and undisclosed purposes.”
