Attorney General Bonta Sues Trump Over Latest Attempt to Weaponize Personal Sensitive Data of Californians

Trump Administration is attempting to disclose troves of data about Californians receiving financial assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to DHS and other agencies

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today, co-leading a multistate coalition, filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s latest attempt to weaponize sensitive personal information about California families and children. Last month, the Trump Administration issued a Systems of Records Notice (SORN) relating to the administration of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which provides states with billions of dollars each year to keep families out of poverty. The SORN purports to dramatically broaden the federal government’s role in overseeing TANF and authorize the wholesale sharing of TANF recipients’ most sensitive personal information with any federal, state, or private entity it wishes, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that the SORN violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Computer Matching Act, and the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and that it should therefore be vacated.
 
“The Trump Administration is exploiting a program designed to ensure children do not go hungry and to help needy families get back on their feet in order to fuel its mass surveillance effort. It’s cruel, unnecessary, and illegal,” said Attorney General Bonta. “While the Trump Administration continues to break the law in order to amass an ever-greater trove of people’s personal information, we’ll continue stepping in to protect the privacy of our people. You have my word.”
 
The TANF program provides states with over $16 billion in grants each year, serving as a crucial component of states’ anti-poverty work and one of the largest sources of cash assistance to low-income American families, including 350,000 families in California each month. In designing the TANF program, Congress gave states substantial flexibility and autonomy, with the aim of eliminating the excessive bureaucracy and overbearing federal oversight that it believed had plagued prior child poverty programs.
 
Despite this, the Trump Administration’s Administration of Children and Families (ACF) asserts that it may share years’ worth of data it has collected — including the Social Security Numbers, marital status, income, and more of past and current TANF recipients — with DHS and other agencies. Nothing in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which established TANF, or any other act supports ACF’s extravagant claims or authority and gross breach of personal privacy.  
 
In the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that the SORN:

• Is contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority in violation of the APA, particularly PRWORA, which strictly limits federal oversight over TANF.
• Is arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA because ACF has given no reasoned explanation for its departure from longstanding agency practice. Furthermore, it is inherently arbitrary for the agency to share information to gain assistance with oversight activity that ACF cannot lawfully perform.
• Violates the Computer Matching Act, which requires an agency to enter into a computer matching agreement when sharing data with another agency.  Here, no such agreement exists between ACF and DHS — or any other recipient agency to which ACF intends to disclose data.
• Violates the Spending Clause by effectively placing a condition on the receipt of TANF funds — a condition of which the states did not have “fair notice” when they accepted those funds.

 
Attorney General Bonta is committed to defending the personal, private data of Californians and pushing back against the President’s attempt to create a mass surveillance database. Attorney General Bonta sued and secured a court order blocking the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from providing DHS with unfettered access to individual personal health data. He also challenged and secured relief blocking the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s demand that states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of SNAP recipients. And Attorney General Bonta recently opposed the Trump Administration’s expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program to include the information of U.S.-born citizens who have never interacted with our immigration system and who never consented to the use of their personal data in this manner.
 
Attorney General Bonta leads this lawsuit with New York Attorney General Letitia James and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. They are joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.