A California judge has temporarily blocked the federal government from collecting personal information about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants in 21 states and Washington, D.C.

Newsweek has contacted the USDA for comment via email outside of regular working hours.

Why It Matters

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which manages SNAP, announced in May that states would be required to share benefit recipient data— including names, birth dates, addresses, and Social Security numbers—under an executive order from the President Donald Trump expanding data sharing between federal and state programs.

According to the USDA, the goal of the data collection is to help root out fraud in the program, which serves some 42 million people nationwide. B

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