A solid majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that SNAP sales data at the store level are confidential and outside of the reach of public-records laws. The Argus Leader newspaper fought for access to the information for eight years on grounds that taxpayers deserved to know how and where the largest U.S. anti-hunger program spends more than $65 billion a year.
The Food Marketing Institute (FMI), which brought the case to the Supreme Court, said the court recognized that public release of the information would give competitors an unfair advantage. “The Freedom on Information Act, or FOIA, was created to shine a light on actions by the government, not on that of private parties,” said the trade group, which represents grocers.
“Today’s ruling will undermine the ability of reporters to access the information they need to do their jobs and is a blow to the transparency of the U.S. government,” said Alexandra Ellerbeck of the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Argus Leader, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, argued the information should be public unless release would cause substantial competitive harm, a position the Supreme Court took in 1974. As part of a story about food stamps, the Argus Leader asked USDA for store-level SNAP sales from 2005-10. “This is a massive blow to the public’s right to know how its tax dollars are being spent and who is benefiting,” said Argus Leader news director Cory Myers.
Writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the government promised long ago to keep the SNAP data private and that the 1974 precedent, known as National Parks, was directed toward material that private entities were required to provide to the government. When FOIA took effect in 1966, “confidential” meant the same as “private” or “secret,” said the opinion.
“At least where commercial or financial information is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the government under an assurance of privacy, the information is ‘confidential’ within the meaning of (FOIA). Because the store-level SNAP data at issue here is confidential under that construction, the judgment of the court of appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion,” wrote Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh.
Justice Stephen Breyer in an opinion that concurred in part and dissented in part with the majority said, “The whole point of FOIA is to give the public access to information that it cannot otherwise obtain.” The majority opinion would allow skittishness, convenience or bureaucratic inertia to override the public’s right to know, wrote Breyer, who said the best route would be to remand the case to the appellate court “for a determination as to whether in this instance, release of the information at issue will cause that genuine harm.” Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor sided with Breyer.
The FMI intervened to bring the case to the Supreme Court following an appellate decision in favor of the newspaper in 2017. The USDA, which opposed release of the store-by-store data during trials before district court and appeals court judges, did not seek Supreme Court review. A USDA spokesperson was not immediately available for comment on the Supreme Court decision.
The 2018 farm law included a provision to exempt from release SNAP “redemption data provided through the electronic benefit transfer system.” When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in April, Assistant Solicitor General Anthony Yang said the USDA would not release the store-level data “if a FOIA exemption applies. So long as the government is not judicially compelled to do so, it will not do so.”
More than 256,000 firms were authorized to redeem SNAP benefits during fiscal 2018, with supermarkets and super stores accounting for 83 percent of the business although being less than 15 percent of the total of firms, according to a USDA report. The USDA report listed redemptions at the state level. At latest count, 36.3 million people received food stamps. The average benefit per person was $121 a month.
To read the Supreme Court decision, click here.