WARRENTON, Mo. — Distributing food stamps soon could get even harder for Missouri’s food aid system, which a federal judge has already called “broken and inaccessible.”
States depend heavily on federal funds to operate their food stamp programs, which help feed about 42 million people nationwide. But a new federal law has restructured the nation’s food assistance, requiring more people to work to qualify for aid and shifting more of the program’s cost onto states over the next decade. Meanwhile, many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, and state governments are straining to help them.
More than a year ago, for example, a federal judge ruled that Missouri’s food aid system was “overwhelmed,” had wrongly denied assistance to applicants, and had caused many to go hungry as a “direct result of the system’s inadequacy.” The judge, Douglas Harpool, ordered the state to fix the problems.
Despite the court order, not much has changed, according to a KFF Health News analysis of state performance metrics.
Missouri’s ongoing problems foreshadow the trouble that lies ahead for state food aid programs nationwide. Food assistance advocates have said Missouri is just one example of a nationwide problem in which strained state systems struggle to deliver timely aid. For example, low-income people in Alaska have faced chronic backlogs while the state ha …