Social services Secretary Laura Howard says she will immediately appeal any decision by the Trump administration to withhold millions of dollars needed to administer the food-assistance program.
In a motion filed in Shawnee County District Court, Howard said she would appeal any attempt by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold $10.4 million a quarter if the state doesn’t turn over personal information sought by the federal government.
An appeal would immediately suspend efforts to halt the money until the dispute is eventually resolved, something that could still take weeks or months to settle, court records indicate.
The USDA is demanding that Kansas and other states provide records identifying applicants or recipients of food-assistance such as names, birth dates, addresses and Social Security numbers. The USDA has suggested the request is intended to root out fraud and abuse
The USDA gave the Kelly administration and more than 20 other states a Friday deadline to submit that information.
But the Department for Children and Families on Sept. 5 asked the agency to suspend its warning to withhold money from the state until a similar legal dispute in California is resolved.
The Kelly administration has been steadfast against turning over the information, saying that state and federal law protect personal identifiable food-assistance data except when necessary to administer the program.
The administration says the requested data includes sensitive personal information for more than 730,000 Kansans who lived in a household that applied for or received food-assistance benefits from Jan. 1, 2020, to July 30, 2025.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Kris Kobach has brought a lawsuit seeking to compel the governor’s administration to give up the information, saying the state is at risk of losing millions of dollars needed to feed needy families.
A status conference on the case was held Thursday where lawyers for the Kelly administration lined up against the Kobach legal team.
Judge Teresa Watson postponed ruling on the case before the Friday deadline.
Watson said she will issue a written opinion on the Kelly administration’s request to dismiss Kobach’s lawsuit on or about Sept. 29.
She will rule on Kobach’s request for temporary injunction soon after.
She asked parties to keep her updated on any new developments, including a similar case playing out in California.
Kobach said there was an emergency to comply with the federal government’s request because of the Sept. 19 deadline, although the Kelly administration points to government regulations that give the state a path for an appeal to withhold any money.
“Respondents make much of the fact that its prospective appeal of (a) disallowance decision will stay enforcement, but they do not once claim that they can recover disallowed funds if their appeal is unsuccessful. That is because they cannot,” the attorney general argues.
The Kelly administration ridiculed the idea in its motion to dismiss.
“Respondents are following the law,” the governor’s lawyers argue.
“This case is a sad political stunt by the attorney general as evidenced by the fact that he chose to litigate via press conference before filing this case or even bothering to confer with respondents, who would have told him: do not panic, Kansas has a plan to preserve the funding of the (food-assistance) program.”
Kobach and his team had its own tart response in their filing.
“Respondents Gov. Laura Kelly and Secretary Laura Howard may not like the law, but they must follow the law,” they wrote.
“In Kansas, the law requires them to provide requested program data to the federal government and otherwise cooperate to ensure the effective, efficient, and accurate administration of the (food-assistance) program.
“Instead, respondents have chosen to defy Kansas and federal law and risk millions of dollars that ultimately help the most vulnerable Kansans.
“It appears that their ‘plan’ is to do nothing and hope that no one will require them to follow the plain text of the law. Their route is neither tenable nor lawful.”
The Kelly administration is watching a case from California closely, believing that the decision in that case would be instructive for Kansas and what court its takes.
There are 21 states battling a similar request from USDA in federal court. A request to block the demand for the information was heard in federal court on Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
In that case, the USDA said the states’ lawsuit was premature because they had not exhausted their administrative remedies to resolve the dispute.
“Critically, an adjudication in that case will provide persuasive authority as to the lawfulness of USDA’s data request,” lawyers for the Kelly administration wrote.
“Such adjudication carries more weight than claims by federal and state executive branch officers in USDA or the Kansas Attorney General’s office that such request is lawful.
“If USDA’s actions are found in violation of federal law in the plaintiff states, so too, does USDA violate federal law in Kansas,” the governor’s legal team wrote.
Kobach has said the California case is irrelevant because it’s playing out in a separate judicial circuit that is not binding on Kansas.
“Respondents assert that ‘the court’s decision may have a direct impact on this matter given that the issues are identical,’ but they do not ever explain what exactly that impact would be,” Kobach argued.
“That case cannot conceivably affect Kansas’s obligation to comply with (USDA’s) request, or the imminent disallowance of funding.”
But the Kelly administration relies on USDA filings in the California case to demonstrate that federal money is not immediately at risk in Kansas.
If the USDA disallows funds for the food assistance program, Howard said she will direct DCF to file a notice appeal with the State Food Stamp Appeals Board within 10 days of that decision. The Kelly administration says that automatically protects the money for now.
In a separate court filing in California, the USDA said states have 10 days to file an appeal after receiving written notice of failure to come into compliance.
During the appeal, USDA’s action is automatically stayed. After the state files its appeal, it has an additional 30 days to submit materials in support of its appeal.
The appeals board then has 60 days from the time the state submits its additional information to schedule and conduct a hearing.
The appeals board then has 30 days after the hearing to issue a final determination.
If the board determines no hearing is necessary, it must issue its decision within 30
days of receiving the state’s additional information.
