A lawsuit is accusing the Tennessee Department of Human Services of mismanaging nutrition assistance benefits so badly that the agency is breaking federal law.
It’s a class action lawsuit involving about a dozen Tennesseans who qualified for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known as SNAP, food stamps or EBT. In each case, recipients were denied benefits, went months without the financial assistance, and were later found to have been eligible the whole time.
Because of the delays, the plaintiffs had to shift money away from other obligations to pay for food. The complaint argues that thousands of other residents are in the same situation.
“Tennesseans, like Plaintiffs, are being harmed as a result, including by going hungry, suffering from malnutrition, forgoing payment on bills and medications, having lower credit scores, getting evicted, and filing for bankruptcy,” it reads.
One family with three children couldn’t afford rent without the benefits and became homeless. The lawsuit includes accounts of two women who were forgoing food while several months pregnant. Some mothers stopped eating dinner each day entirely to ensure their kids could eat.
Outside of these specific cases, the lawsuit alleges the agency is chronically failing to meet federal regulations on application processing times. It says DHS is intentionally depriving applicants of information or resources.
The Department of Human Services hasn’t responded to requests for comment as of Wednesday afternoon.
The lawsuit is accusing DHS of breaking federal laws about the SNAP program and asks the judicial branch to force reforms. That includes court order for a remediation plan, new disclosure messaging to recipients when they’re facing delays, monthly reports on the overdue applications backlog, and the establishment of a third-party to monitor progress.
Errors on income verification
Kathryn Colbert, a mother of three in Knoxville, applied for SNAP in late May last year. The agency denied the application, saying her income was too high. She was unemployed when she filed, and she was still unemployed when she filed an appeal in June. She didn’t get a hearing until November. The agency awarded the family back-paid benefits in January. By that time — roughly 8 months had passed — the family had already fallen so behind financially, they had become homeless.
Several litigants were employed, but the agency miscalculated their income and overestimated it. DHS denied the benefits because the estimated income was too high, and after months in the appeals process, overturned the decision.
Errors on document submissions
Erin Bull, the lead plaintiff, lives in Bradley County. Her experience shows the kind of challenges and delays that prompted the lawsuit.
She applied on behalf of her six-person family in August. When she turned in her materials, she included the required bank statement. The agency sent a letter saying Bull was missing proof of “liquid resources,” a term she hadn’t seen on the application.
She went to a DHS office on Sept. 16 to ask for help. The worker told her the “liquid resource” document was a bank statement. Bull noted she had already submitted that, and the SNAP application online portal showed it had been submitted. The worker said she was making a note about the mistake. On a second visit, a worker told Bull her application was complete, and to wait for news.
On Oct. 4, she went to the DHS office for the third time, where she was told her application was denied back in September. She had never been contacted.
In December, four months after the initial application, the family was awarded benefits going forward, and for a few of the months they should have been getting payments — but not for the first two. The agency told Bull her income was too high those months. When she reviewed the income, she said the amount was wrong and she didn’t understand how DHS calculated it. As of the filing, the family still hasn’t gotten those benefits.
Brandi Tapia, a mother of one, lives in Nashville. In her case, difficulties with the DHS process played out over nine months. Like others, she found she was never given credit for steps she took. The agency failed to document her interview, so she had to redo it. She was told multiple times that the same document — a paystub — was missing, even though the online portal showed she uploaded it three times. She was ultimately denied for that missing paystub.
Appeals continued for months, and she was eventually paid all of the back benefits. But by that time, she and her son had been evicted.
Failure to offer interviews
Others were booted for missing scheduled interviews — after the agency failed to schedule an interview.
Candice Jacques is a mother with a 2-year-old in Nashville. They were terminated from the program without notice on Dec. 31, 2023, according to the lawsuit. She got a letter saying she was terminated for not cooperating with the eligibility check, but hadn’t been contacted by the agency before that. She called to check on her case in February, and was told her application timed out and expired.
“On the call, a DHS representative admitted that the agency failed to mail her a recertification notice and application to fill out and stated that it would not be hard to get benefits back since it was DHS’s fault,” the complaint reads.
She reapplied and had an interview scheduled for March 5.
“…But DHS never called for the interview,” the complaint reads. “In response, DHS sent a “Notice of Missed Interview” to Ms. Jacques on March 6, 2024. DHS subsequently denied her application on March 21, 2024.”
Jacques called to reschedule, and was told that the agency was delayed on making calls. A worker said she was put on a wait list. She got another interview scheduled in late April. But again, the call never came. And again, she called to reschedule. She was told to re-start the application process.
The lawsuit states Jacques faced hold times of up to five hours throughout the process. During one of the calls, a worker admitted to being a volunteer who was helping only because wait times were so long.
Jacques was awarded benefits in May, and was given some back payments. But not all of them. She went through months of appeals processes for the missing months, but eventually was told her appeal was too late because it was filed more than 90 days after the incident.
There are several examples of DHS denying appeals because they were filed more than 90 days after the decision. Federal law says appellants can file up to a year later.
During the time without benefits, Jacques’ cell phone was disconnected, and the mother and daughter had to move into low-income housing.
The lawsuit claims the interview process is intentionally broken.
“DHS makes it impossible for applicants to complete the interview process by failing to provide sufficient advance notice of the interview, then uses that failure to deny benefits for ‘refusal to cooperate’ with the agency in determining their eligibility,” the complaint reads. “The practice flouts a federal prohibition against denying eligibility for refusal to cooperate without having first made a finding that a missed interview was the result of the applicant’s refusal rather than mere failure to comply… DHS terminates individuals for failing to participate in an interview when DHS staff did not make the interview calls at all, provide any advanced Notice of Appointment or Interview, give sufficient advanced notice of an interview to reasonably enable an applicant to attend the scheduled appointment, or determine whether the individual was actually refusing to cooperate or merely missed the appointment.”
Delays could be breaking the law
Congress signed off on SNAP by passing legislation about it in 1977, and has updated the law since then. State agencies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program on a national level, have to follow requirements laid out in these laws.
Among the requirements are timeline caps. DHS has 30 days from the application date to determine eligibility. If applicants are rejected, the agency is ordered to offer a written decision on their appeal within 60 days. The lawsuit says that isn’t happening.
The complaint uses DHS’ own data as snapshots to illustrate how widespread the problem is.
One example: From Jan. 1 through March 31 of last year, DHS had 69,657 overdue initial normal applications. It had 35,016 overdue initial expedited applications, which often are on the fast track because the applicant is homeless. It had 10,872 overdue applications for people who already had benefits and were trying to keep them.
Applicants who get rejected are allowed to file for an appeal, and then get a hearing on that appeal. The USDA requires the agency to decide on appeals within 60 days of the hearing. Between June and October of last year, the process was taking an average of 138 days. Some plaintiffs in the case faced even longer wait times. Around the same period, DHS had 7,437 overdue decisions for appeals.
The lawsuit argues it’s unlikely for DHS to ever catch up under the current system for several reasons, but one of them is the agency gets more appeal applications than it can hold hearings for. From July to September of last year, there were 9,495 requests for a hearing, but it was only able to offer 4,238 hearings.
Also, appeal requests are common. Litigants say that’s because people are often erroneously denied. In 2020, over 29% of appeals that got a formal response said that the rejected applicant should be getting benefits.
Lawsuits to improve social programs and government services
Ultimately, the lawsuit is calling for the court to enforce a remediation plan to fix the structural problems.
This kind of lawsuit is a common practice for advocates working to overhaul government agencies.
In 2000, attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services for mismanaging its foster care program. After 10 years of legal fights, the state entered an improvement plan, known as a settlement agreement. This one was titled “Brian A” after the lead plaintiff in the case. It had 136 reform goals. Those included prioritizing placement with families instead of institutional settings, making sure case workers have a reasonable work load, better oversight when it comes to prescribing foster children psychotropic medications, increased transparency and reporting requirements around child deaths.
Children’s rights advocates praise that case for bringing “transformational change” to the state.
That being said, improvements hit roadblocks along the way. For example, the computer system that the agency used was riddled with bugs and made it hard to keep track of basic case information and statewide trends.
Tennessee is one of several states that have entered into settlement agreements for foster care specifically. New York was the first to do it, after a suit filed in the early 1970s. Since then, similar litigation has happened in more than a dozen other states, including Mississippi, Oregon, Oklahoma and South Carolina
Dozens of law enforcement agencies across the country are implementing court-ordered improvement plans, most famously the Minneapolis Police Department after the George Floyd killing.
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