Single mother sues — and beats — Kentucky for kicking her off food stamps because she bought food at the store where she worked

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.”

Facing punishment, recipients are pressured to waive their hearings

Kentuckians receive notice of their alleged suspicious activity through mailed letters, in which they’re asked to voluntarily waive their right to a hearing and automatically accept the punishment. On first offense, that’s generally a one-year SNAP ban. They’re also required to repay the full amount the state says they misused.

Often, these cases involve a relatively small amount of money. Records show that more than 900 people have been kicked off for “trafficking” or misuse for less than $1,000 since 2022. The lowest amount alleged was 14 cents.

The state has leaned heavily on administrative hearing waivers since 2015, and by 2023, almost a quarter of all disqualifications were via waiver. Some lawsuits allege individuals did not fully understand the consequences of the waivers and were encouraged to sign by officials.

Kentucky Public Radio reviewed more than two dozen cases since 2020 in which the cabinet accused an individual of trafficking using only spending patterns, despite the participants’ denial or lack of response — and with no other evidence or interviews presented, according to administrative hearing decisions.

Kendra Steele, a spokesperson for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, declined to schedule an interview with cabinet officials after multiple requests. Steele said in an email that “we have never” brought trafficking cases based solely on transactional data and acknowledged it would not be sufficient to prove intent.

In response to a different question, Steele wrote the investigation into fraud allegations consists of looking into income, living situations “and patterns of spending that are indicative of trafficking.” She did not indicate how any of those factors could be used to prove intentional misuse or selling of SNAP benefits, or how it differs from relying on transactional data — which is inherently a pattern of spending. Steele said in another email that they also interview vendors and SNAP recipients.

‘It’s our fellow Kentuckians who are going hungry’

Roughly 4 in 25 Kentuckians suffer from food insecurity, similar to the national rate of about 14%, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Feeding America data.

The USDA will stop collecting and releasing statistics on food insecurity after October, saying Sept. 20 that the numbers had become “overly politicized.” The decision comes in the wake of federal funding cuts for food and nutrition safety net programs nationwide.

In the last fiscal year, 1 in 8 Kentuckians benefitted from SNAP, formerly called food stamps. Food insecurity in Kentucky’s rural areas is even more stark, and legal representation harder to come by.

“The people who benefit from these programs are some of the folks that we need to be helping the most in this country,” Dodds said. “It’s our fellow Kentuckians who are going hungry as a result of baseless allegations of waste, fraud and abuse.”

The cabinet denied KPR’s request for case notes on individual fraud accusations starting in early 2024 that would include the evidence used in the accusations. But administrative hearing decisions reviewed by KPR from 2020 through 2023 included evidence the cabinet relied on; hearing officers would frequently say a person had trafficked their benefits based on shopping patterns the state deemed suspicious.

Expert say officials overrely on purchase data

National legal experts who specialize in SNAP access say an overreliance on transactional data isn’t unique to Kentucky. Transactional data was initially meant as a tool to identify potential fraud cases — not as a means to prove it, Georgetown law professor David Super said.

He’s studied SNAP disqualifications for decades, and has seen many cases where he believes transactional data is misconstrued as direct evidence of wrongdoing, instead of requiring a state to build cases with witnesses, affidavits, video evidence and plea deals.

In one redacted 2023 state administrative hearing decision, a hearing officer decided a woman in the eastern Kentucky city of McKee had trafficked her benefits because she had made eight back-to-back transactions in a year. The decision also said she’d checked her balance several times, made a few insufficient fund attempts and had incorrectly entered her PIN number a few times.

She lost her SNAP benefits for a year. In an appeal, the woman told the state she has two kids and had recently discovered she was pregnant.

“Everyone forgets to get something and has to go back in the store and get it,” she wrote, defending her back-to-back purchases.

She received another hearing, but the outcome didn’t change.

Cabinet officials acknowledged in cross examinations during a 2023 case that back-to-back transactions and whole-dollar purchases aren’t forbidden under SNAP rules, nor are recipients told that the cabinet considers them suspicious.

But all of these things are used as evidence — sometimes the sole evidence — that a person misused their benefits.

Kristie Goff, an AppalRed legal aid lawyer in Prestonsburg in southeast Kentucky, used to see many of these cases, though they’ve declined in the last year.

“There have been very few instances in cases I have handled, where a client was not able to give me a perfectly reasonable explanation for those transactions, and none of it was trafficking,” Goff said. “There are no receipts, there’s no video footage to show that someone’s doing anything wrong. It’s just a number written on a paper.”

While saying purchasing history is insufficient to prove trafficking, Kentucky judges have stopped short of demanding that the state change how it trains employees or conducts its SNAP investigations.

State training materials focus almost entirely on purchase patterns

In response to an open records request, the cabinet provided KPR with documents used to train investigators on intentional program violations. They appear to almost exclusively discuss transactional data, including investigating back-to-back payments, large transactions and whole-dollar purchases.

In 2020, Michigan appellate judges decided transactional data alone is never sufficient to prove that a business — or person — fraudulently used SNAP benefits.

Dodds believes that should be the standard for all states, including Kentucky.

He is in the early stages of systematically reviewing thousands of SNAP benefit trafficking hearing decisions between 2020 and 2023. Data from about 700 decisions in 2020 alone already shows that many Kentuckians have been denied benefits before the state presents what he considers real evidence of guilt.

“There are maybe a handful of cases that I would say there was real evidence that they had done something wrong,” Dodds said. “There was one where a woman was on the phone with the hearing officer while she was actively trying to sell her benefits. … But cases with non-transactional data are exceedingly rare.”

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Associated Press data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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This reporting is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network and The Associated Press focused on how rural communities across the U.S. are navigating food insecurity issues. Nine nonprofit newsrooms were involved in the series: The Beacon, Capital B, Enlace Latino NC, Investigate Midwest, The Jefferson County Beacon, KOSU, Louisville Public Media, The Maine Monitor and MinnPost. The Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.