About 36,000 Connecticut residents are at risk of losing access to food stamp benefits due to new eligibility requirements outlined in a recent federal bill.
The cuts to food assistance in H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will directly affect thousands of immigrants, young adults, veterans and people experiencing homelessness because of new, stricter work requirements and other changes. They are expected to lose coverage between Dec. 1 and March 31.
The people affected represent about 10% of the state’s residents who receive benefits through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“We’re going to have a whole lot of people who don’t have access to the food they need to stay healthy,” said Sara Parker McKernan, policy advocate for New Haven Legal Assistance. “People are going to eat as frugally as they can, which means a lot of really inexpensive foods that they’re able to buy because they don’t have the advantage of SNAP anymore.”
Here’s what’s happening with food assistance changes under the bill.
Who is affected by the changes?
H.R. 1 imposes a work requirement on adults 55 through 64 and parents with children 14 and older for the first time. It removes exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness and young people who recently aged out of foster care — exemptions that were added in bipartisan legislation in 2023, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. Recipients must now document 20 hours of work per week, participate in a narrow set of work activities or prove they qualify for another exemption.
The bill also ends eligibility for many immigrants living lawfully in the U.S. who have been granted humanitarian protection by the federal government, including refugees, people granted asylum and certain survivors of domestic violence and sex trafficking.
“We’re talking about folks who have been physical laborers their entire life, and all of a sudden, they’re getting to the stage where their bodies are giving out and they can no longer compete with younger workers,” McKernan said. “We’re talking about folks who have raised their kids or grandkids and now have an empty house and no work history. They may have kids over the age of 14, but they can’t act in that caretaker role and get SNAP.”
What do advocates say?
Advocates worry the changes will mean more families will go hungry.
“When you’ve got a family who are looking at a budget that doesn’t work – their income doesn’t balance with their expenses — they start saying, ‘What can we squeeze?’ Rent is what it is, you have no power to negotiate health insurance premiums, the cost of gas is what it is. One area where families have some flexibility to squeeze a budget down is food,” said Lisa Tepper Bates, president and CEO of the United Way of Connecticut.
Some families might lean toward purchasing foods that are calorie-dense to maintain their caloric intake but that aren’t nutrient-dense, health officials said. That can lead to conditions like obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
“When I was working full-time running a shelter for families experiencing homelessness, this is the part of their budget where they were looking to spend as little as possible so they could maximize what they had for rent,” Tepper Bates said. “What that meant was often, for a family with two small kids, they’re buying a 10-pound bag of white rice and five pounds of the cheapest hamburger meat they can find, and that’s going to be the basis of their food for the week. That is simply not adequate nutrition.”
Are there legal challenges?
Attorney General William Tong announced late last month that he and 21 other attorneys general are suing the federal government, seeking to block new guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that deems some immigrants ineligible for food assistance even after they become permanent residents.
In October, the USDA issued new guidance to state agencies describing changes to SNAP eligibility under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Tong said the memo incorrectly asserted that all individuals who entered the country through certain pathways — including refugees, asylum recipients and others — would remain permanently ineligible for SNAP, even after obtaining green cards and becoming lawful permanent residents. The attorneys general argue the guidance contradicts federal law and could impose large financial penalties on states.
“The Trump Administration cannot help themselves. They are messing with SNAP benefits again. This time they are inventing their own rules to permanently ban legal immigrants — green card holders — from ever receiving food stamps,” Tong said in a statement. “There is zero basis in the law for this cruel move, and we’re suing to stop them.”
Will the state step in with funding?
With many poised to lose benefits, advocates are asking elected officials to create a state-funded food assistance program to fill the gap.
Since at least the 1990s, Connecticut had a state-financed food stamp program for legal immigrants who otherwise would have been eligible for the federal program but were excluded by welfare reform legislation in 1996. The legislature in August 2016 directed the state Department of Social Services to stop adding people to the program, though the initiative was funded through 2017, officials with DSS said.
In September, representatives with Greater Hartford Legal Aid, New Haven Legal Assistance and Connecticut Legal Services sent a letter to Gov. Ned Lamont and Democratic legislative leaders asking them to, among other things, establish a state-funded food assistance program for previously eligible legal immigrants and others who may lose SNAP benefits.
“We urge you to address the imminent harm to low-income CT residents that cuts to SNAP in H.R. 1 are poised to inflict. Our low-income clients depend on SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their families and depend on information and resources provided by DSS to access those benefits,” six people with those organizations wrote.
Sen. Matthew Lesser, a Democrat from Middletown who is co-chair of the Human Services Committee, said he and his colleagues are interested in exploring a state-funded food assistance program during the legislative session that begins in February. Launching such an initiative would require money and software upgrades to run it, he said.
House Speaker Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, pointed to a $500 million emergency fund authorized during the special session this month as one way to help residents losing access to SNAP. “This is an example of what the fund could be used for,” he said. “Obviously, the governor has a lot of discretion, and we have to vote on it. If the governor were to come to us and say, ‘I’d like to help out these folks who are getting kicked off SNAP,’ I would support that.”
A spokesman for Lamont said the governor is still reviewing how to use money in the emergency fund.
