A new lawsuit against the state alleges the Tennessee Department of Human Services has violated federal law in continued mismanagement of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program program that benefits low-income families.
Tennesseans have faced eviction and gone hungry due to systemic delays, document mishandling and unfair appeal wait times that delayed SNAP benefits, according to the lawsuit filed by nearly a dozen people.
The plaintiffs have asked a federal judge to find Tennessee and DHS in violation of federal law, the SNAP Act, which requires the state to process new applications, appeals and other SNAP issues within certain amount of time.
“When the state agency fails to comply, as DHS chronically does here, individuals are harmed and must eithergo hungry, skip meals, or find other ways to secure food — such as turning to any friends or family,locating a food bank, or forgoing payment of other essential bills to pay for it,” the lawsuit states.
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DHS routinely loses vital paperwork, mishandles documents and even terminates benefit applications without interviewing applicants, according to the lawsuit.
In the case of one plaintiff, Brandi Tapia, DHS misplaced documentation of an interview and denied her SNAP benefits for failing to submit a requested paystub. Tapia had submitted it three different times, and later documentation proved DHS had the paystub on Tapia’s file.
Tapia appealed and in July received back benefits, but the lawsuit states she and her son were evicted in the interim.
“Ms. Tapia was put in a situation where she had to spend money on food for her son or pay rent,” the lawsuit states. “She chose to feed her son and was evicted for failure to make timely rent payments.”
DHS has not yet responded to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee sued over alleged SNAP benefits delays, mismanagement