SNAP Recipients Sue USDA Over Soda Ban — What 42 Million Can’t Buy Now

Five food stamp recipients sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture on March 11, 2026, challenging the Trump administration’s approval of “food restriction waivers” that ban SNAP participants from buying soda, energy drinks, candy, and other sugary items. The plaintiffs argue the USDA exceeded its legal authority by letting states redefine what counts as “food” under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program without following required public notice procedures.

The case, Aragon et al. v. Rollins et al., Case No. 1:26-cv-00861, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It names Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as defendants. As of June 2026, cross-motions for summary judgment are pending before the court, meaning a ruling on the legality of all 22 waivers could come at any time.

SNAP Sugary Drinks Lawsuit Timeline and Updates

April 2025 — Trump Administration Opens the Door to State Waivers

In April 2025, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that states could apply for federal waivers to restrict what SNAP recipients can purchase with their benefits. The initiative was framed as part of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, aimed at reducing diet-related chronic disease.

For 60 years before this, the only items excluded from SNAP were alcohol, tobacco, hot prepared foods, and personal care products. That list had never expanded to ban broad categories of packaged food or beverages. Previous administrations, including the first Trump administration, had reviewed and declined similar waiver requests, questioning their legal basis and practical feasibility.

May–June 2025 — First Wave of Waivers Approved

In May 2025, the USDA began approving state waiver requests in rapid succession. Nebraska was among the first states to receive approval — a move multiple prior administrations had specifically rejected. By June 10, 2025, Secretary Rollins signed waivers for Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska, citing the MAHA initiative as the policy driver.

The USDA grounded the waivers in Section 17(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, which authorizes pilot projects “designed to test program changes that might increase the efficiency” of SNAP and “improve the delivery of benefits to eligible households.” Critics noted immediately that barring recipients from buying certain foods does neither — a legal argument that would later anchor the federal lawsuit.

December 2025 — Waiver Count Reaches 18 States

By December 2025, the USDA had approved food restriction waivers for 18 states: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. Implementation dates varied widely, with some states scheduled to begin enforcement in January 2026 and others not until 2027 or 2028.

The National Retail Federation warned of longer checkout lines, increased customer complaints, and significant costs for grocers who would need to reprogram point-of-sale systems, recode thousands of products, and retrain staff. Confusion over which items qualified in which states became a documented problem before restrictions had even fully taken effect.

January 1, 2026 — Restrictions Begin Enforcing in Five States

On January 1, 2026, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, and West Virginia became the first states to implement food restriction waivers. These five states alone covered approximately 1.4 million SNAP recipients. What was banned differed by state. Indiana restricted soft drinks and candy. Iowa went further, restricting those categories plus all other taxable foods as defined by the Iowa Department of Revenue, with an exception only for produce. Nebraska restricted soda and energy drinks. Utah and West Virginia banned soft drinks and soda, respectively.

Iowa’s waiver immediately stood out for its scope. Recipients were required to read ingredient lists on nearly every item to determine whether it qualified. Marc Craig, an Iowa-based plaintiff in the later lawsuit, described arriving at checkout only to learn that items he believed were eligible were declined.

March 4, 2026 — Four More States Added, Total Reaches 22

On March 4, 2026, the USDA approved food restriction waivers for Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, and Wyoming, bringing the total to 22 states. Kansas would ban candy and soft drinks beginning February 15, 2027. Ohio would restrict sugar-sweetened beverages starting October 1, 2026. Wyoming would ban sweetened carbonated beverages on February 1, 2027. Nevada would restrict candy and sugar-sweetened beverages effective February 1, 2028.

Kennedy issued a press release the same day, calling on all governors nationwide to submit waiver requests and declaring: “SNAP exists to nourish vulnerable Americans, not bankroll the products driving our chronic disease crisis.”

March 11, 2026 — Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court

The National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ) and the antitrust law firm Shinder Cantor Lerner filed the lawsuit on behalf of five SNAP recipients in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The complaint targeted waivers in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia and asked the court to declare all 22 waivers unlawful and issue an injunction blocking those already in effect and preventing implementation of those not yet active.

NCLEJ senior attorney Katharine Deabler-Meadows described the waivers as a “backdoor in national policy that expresses the administration’s preferences around food” and said the USDA had approved them without the notice-and-comment process that federal law requires before agencies change rules affecting the public. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), the National Grocers Association, and multiple advocacy organizations voiced support for the lawsuit on the day it was filed.

June 2026 — Case Reaches Summary Judgment Stage

As of June 2026, both parties have filed cross-motions for summary judgment, meaning both sides are asking the court to rule in their favor without a full trial. That posture indicates neither party believes the core legal dispute turns on contested facts — only on how the law applies to undisputed actions by the USDA. A ruling on these motions would likely determine whether all 22 waivers survive or are voided.

Separately, a broader USDA nutrition funding dispute produced a related ruling: on June 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from tying federal nutrition funding to unrelated policy compliance conditions. That ruling, obtained by a coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia, addressed different USDA overreach claims but reflected growing judicial scrutiny of administrative attempts to reshape SNAP outside of Congress.

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The complaint makes three distinct claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the federal statute that governs how agencies make rules and change policies.

First, plaintiffs argue the USDA acted without statutory authority. Section 17(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act authorizes pilot projects designed to increase SNAP’s efficiency and improve delivery of benefits. Restricting what recipients can buy does neither. The statute has never been understood to allow the executive branch to narrow Congress’s definition of “food” — a definition that has remained stable since 1964. Congress has explicitly excluded alcohol, tobacco, hot prepared foods, and vitamins. It has never excluded broad commercial food categories like soda or candy.

Second, plaintiffs argue the USDA violated the APA’s notice-and-comment requirement. Before a federal agency changes a rule that affects the public, it must publish the proposed rule, accept public comment, and respond to substantive objections. The USDA approved 22 state waivers without doing any of that. Recipients, retailers, healthcare advocates, and advocacy organizations had no formal opportunity to weigh in before their lives were affected.

Third, plaintiffs argue the waivers are arbitrary and capricious — the APA’s standard for rules that lack reasoned explanation. The USDA approved restrictions with no evaluation methodology, no threshold for what counts as “nutritious,” and no mechanism for measuring whether the restrictions actually improve health outcomes. Different states define banned items differently, creating patchwork rules that vary block by block for national retailers and online grocery services.

The Five Plaintiffs and What the Restrictions Mean for Them

The five named plaintiffs were chosen to illustrate a range of medical and personal circumstances where the restrictions cause specific, concrete harm.

The medical dimensions of these stories received attention from health policy experts. The restriction that bars a diabetic patient from buying glucose-raising drinks is not a hypothetical edge case — it is the direct consequence of applying a blanket soda ban without medical exemptions to a program serving 42 million people with vastly different health conditions.

What Is Actually Banned — And Why the Confusion Matters

Each state’s waiver covers different products. There is no federal standard for what counts as a “sugary drink” or “candy” for purposes of SNAP restriction. That inconsistency is not incidental — it is one of the lawsuit’s central complaints.

Iowa’s definition is the broadest and most contested. It adopts the state’s sales tax category of “taxable foods” as its benchmark for restricted items. That definition includes items that most people would not consider junk food — and excludes categories that retailers and recipients struggle to identify without checking the Iowa Department of Revenue’s tax database. Tennessee’s definition, which bans any processed food with sugar or corn syrup listed before the second ingredient, would ban a substantial portion of the standard grocery store’s packaged goods.

The Retailer Problem — Why Grocers Are Also Alarmed

Grocery retailers are not named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but they are directly affected. Complying with 22 different state waiver definitions requires each SNAP-authorized retailer to identify, track, and enforce purchase restrictions across tens of thousands of individual products. That means reprogramming point-of-sale systems, recoding every restricted item’s database entry, retraining cashiers, and updating online ordering systems.

The National Grocers Association issued a statement after the waivers rolled out saying they had “introduced significant new challenges for independent grocers working to serve their communities.” Under the USDA’s compliance framework, retailers face a progressive enforcement structure: a 90-day grace period, then a warning letter, then involuntary withdrawal of SNAP authorization if the retailer still does not comply within 30 days of the warning. Losing SNAP authorization is a terminal outcome for many independent grocers who serve low-income communities where SNAP participation is high.

Online grocery sales add another layer of complexity. The USDA has clarified that waiver restrictions apply based on the state reflected in the customer’s EBT card, not the retailer’s warehouse location. A fulfillment center in Ohio shipping to a customer in West Virginia must apply West Virginia’s restrictions. That requires EBT-card-level restriction logic built into national ordering platforms — a nontrivial technical build that major online grocers began working on well before the restrictions took effect.

Who Is Actually on SNAP — The Demographics the Policy Hits

SNAP served an average of 42.1 million people per month in 2023, representing about 12.6% of the U.S. population. Recipients receive an average of $187 per month — roughly $6.24 per day — to cover all food purchases. That figure provides context for what it means when a recipient must spend scarce cash on a restricted item instead of using their benefit: trade-offs against rent, utilities, and transportation become immediate.

Approximately 26% of SNAP participants — about 10.2 million people — are Black. Several of the states with the broadest waiver restrictions, including Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina, also have among the highest proportions of Black SNAP recipients. Critics of the policy argue that the restrictions, even if race-neutral on their face, impose disproportionate burdens on Black households that depend on SNAP for basic food security.

Among the other major demographic groups in SNAP: working families make up a significant share of the caseload. Single parents, people with disabilities, elderly individuals on fixed incomes, and workers in low-wage jobs all rely on SNAP. The restriction policy was designed around a generalized image of a SNAP recipient buying soda instead of vegetables. The five plaintiffs in the lawsuit represent a different reality: people using restricted items for medical reasons, disability accommodation, or as the only foods a family member with a sensory disorder can safely eat.

What the Government Says in Its Defense

The USDA has not commented publicly on the pending litigation, directing questions to the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs. The policy rationale articulated in press releases from Rollins and Kennedy centers on chronic disease: the United States spends billions annually on diet-related illnesses, and SNAP funds — which are federal taxpayer dollars — should support nutritious choices rather than products that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

The administration’s position is that Section 17(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act gives the USDA broad discretion to approve state pilot projects and that the waivers represent a permissible exercise of that discretion. Government attorneys have argued the waivers are within the executive branch’s authority to shape program administration without going through formal notice-and-comment rulemaking, because they fall under the pilot program provision rather than a formal regulatory change.

The Legal Question That Will Decide the Case

The lawsuit turns on a single statutory question: does Section 17(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act authorize the USDA to let states narrow the definition of “food” by excluding broad commercial categories that Congress has never restricted?

Plaintiffs say no. The provision authorizes pilot projects to improve efficiency and delivery — not to reduce what recipients can buy. Congress has been specific about SNAP exclusions when it wanted them: alcohol, tobacco, hot prepared foods, vitamins. It has never voted to ban soda or candy. Under the non-delegation doctrine and principles of administrative law reinforced in recent Supreme Court decisions, the argument goes, an agency cannot use a narrow pilot program provision to accomplish a sweeping policy transformation that Congress itself never authorized.

The government says yes. The waiver provision gives states and the USDA flexibility to test changes, and restricting certain foods is within the scope of testing changes to the program. The administration will likely argue the court should defer to the agency’s interpretation of its own statute.

The current Supreme Court’s skepticism toward broad agency authority — expressed most forcefully in West Virginia v. EPA (2022) and reinforced in subsequent administrative law decisions — may favor the plaintiffs if the court applies a “major questions” analysis: major policy changes of this kind require clear congressional authorization, not creative interpretation of a pilot program provision. The D.C. district court’s ruling on summary judgment will likely be the first court to say which way those principles cut in this specific context. Similar cases where agencies bypassed proper rulemaking procedures have faced growing judicial scrutiny in recent years.

What a Win for Plaintiffs Would Mean

If the court grants the plaintiffs summary judgment and voids the waivers, the effect would be immediate and nationwide. All 22 state waivers — including those not yet in effect — would be struck down. SNAP recipients in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Utah, West Virginia, and other states where restrictions are already active would regain access to all SNAP-eligible items without restriction. States with waivers scheduled for 2026, 2027, and 2028 could not implement them.

A win would not necessarily prevent the administration from pursuing SNAP restrictions through other channels. Congress could legislate the restrictions directly. The USDA could attempt to issue formal rulemaking through the notice-and-comment process, which would require publishing the proposed change, accepting public input, and responding to substantive objections before any restriction took effect. That path is slower and more politically vulnerable to opposition from anti-poverty advocates, the food industry, and healthcare organizations.

Plaintiffs in similar cases challenging executive overreach in benefits programs — including the 23andMe lawsuit, where procedural failures by a company led to major legal exposure — have shown that courts take due process and procedural compliance seriously.

What This Lawsuit Teaches Consumers

The food stamps sugary drinks lawsuit is not primarily about soda. It is about who gets to decide what 42 million low-income Americans can eat, through what process, and with what accountability. For 60 years, Congress drew the lines: no alcohol, no tobacco, no hot food. Everything else was a choice for the recipient. The Trump administration changed that by executive fiat, through a pilot program provision that had never been interpreted to authorize this kind of categorical restriction, without asking the public, the recipients, or the retailers who would bear the cost of compliance.

The five plaintiffs who stepped forward represent a much larger population of SNAP recipients for whom the affected items are not trivial preferences but practical necessities tied to medical conditions, disability, neurodevelopmental disorders, and the real constraints of poverty. A diabetic who cannot afford to buy glucose drinks out of pocket and a teenager with ARFID who will otherwise face a feeding tube are not edge cases the policy overlooked. They are predictable consequences of imposing a blanket ban on a nutritionally diverse program serving a medically complex population.

The case also illustrates what happens when agencies skip public process. Had the USDA followed notice-and-comment requirements, the specific harms identified in the complaint — the diabetic in Colorado, the boy with kidney disease in Iowa, the Tennessee caretaker and her daughter — would have been documented and on the record before a single waiver was signed. The administrative law principle behind that requirement is not bureaucratic formality. It is the mechanism by which those most affected by a policy change get to tell the agency what the policy will actually do to them.

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