A single mother who relied on federal food assistance lost her benefits in 2020 after Kentucky investigators concluded she’d committed fraud.
The state alleged she had made multiple same-day purchases, tried to overdraw her account a few times, entered a few invalid PINs and sometimes made “whole-dollar” purchases that are unlikely during typical grocery runs.
The woman from Salyersville in Appalachian Kentucky had an explanation: She worked at the store. She would sometimes buy lunch there and then get groceries after work. Her child would also occasionally use her card.
An administrative hearing officer kicked her off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) regardless, based solely on the allegedly suspicious shopping pattern. She sued — and won.
“It is draconian to take away SNAP benefits from a single mother without clear and convincing evidence that intentional trafficking was occurring during a time when food scarcity is so prevalent,” Franklin County Judge Thomas Wingate said in his 2023 decision.
A surge of disqualifications
Over the last five years, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has brought hundreds of fraud cases that are heavily reliant on transactional data with the goal of revoking people’s food benefits.
Judges, lawyers and legal experts said in interviews and in court documents that such evidence proves little. Kentucky Public Radio reviewed dozens of administrative hearing decisions and court documents from the last five years in which the cabinet relied on shopping patterns to prove a person had “trafficked,” or sold, their benefits.
Kentucky is so aggressive in disqualifying people from SNAP benefits that the state is second in the nation for per-capita administrative disqualifications, behind Florida, according to the most recent federal data from 2023.
In the last decade, disqualifications in Kentucky rose from fewer than 100 in 2015 to over 1,800 in 2023. And more than 300 others have been accused of selling or misusing their benefits since January 2024, according to records obtained by Kentucky Public Radio.
Another Franklin County judge in 2023 ordered the cabinet to stop disqualifying individuals based solely on transactional data, but since the decision, at least three lawsuits allege the health agency continues to bring such cases.
Transactional data alone cannot prove intent to commit fraud nor show the actual result of any individual transaction, University of Kentucky law professor Cory Dodds said, adding, “I’m not saying that folks didn’t do it, didn’t commit the fraud, but I don’t think the cabinet in a lot of these cases has met their burden of proof, either.”
Read the rest at Fox56 News.
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