A law that allowed the sharing of limitless amounts of personal data across the state to find people eligible for CalFresh was rescinded this week.
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 593 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, that forbids state and local departments from sharing sensitive personal data to increase food stamp enrollment.
But only a year ago, it was Wicks who introduced that same data sharing initiative, to get more people enrolled in CalFresh, the state's federally funded food assistance program. Her bill from last year, Assembly Bill 518, granted state and local public entities involved in education, crime, employment, and other areas the authority to override all state privacy laws to share data about people who could potentially get CalFresh.
CalFresh is funded by the federal government, run by the state Department of Social Services and administered locally. Over 1 in 5 Californians are food insecure. About 5 million Californians are CalFresh recipients, and the state estimates almost 2 million more are eligible and haven’t signed up.
Around 200,000 college students in California receive CalFresh, according to the California Department of Social Services. All recipients must complete an application process many consider time-consuming and confusing.
In May, 20,000 college students applied for CalFresh, and over half of the applications were denied, often because the student couldn’t prove they were eligible, according to the social services department. CalFresh coordinators say students are unaware of their own eligibility, making outreach important. Through data sharing, Wicks intended to identify demographic groups as well as individuals who are eligible for CalFresh, and develop marketing that would appeal to them.
Reversing course on data sharing
In July, Wicks told a Senate committee she had changed her strategy to ensure data could not be shared beyond what is necessary for CalFresh outreach.
She said limitations on data sharing were increasingly important as the “federal government is attempting to weaponize state data to actively prosecute a subset of Californians.” In June, the federal government shared Medicaid data with the Department of Homeland Security for the stated purpose of monitoring alleged Medicaid fraud. In September, Newsom signed Senate Bill 81, which protects medical data from immigration authorities, effective immediately.
The feds have also asked for CalFresh data. In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture requested all state agencies send names, addresses and Social Security numbers of people who either received or applied for food assistance, as well as the calculated value of all the benefits allotted over time. The department cited an executive order by President Donald Trump as the basis for the request.
California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and others representing Democratic states sued the Trump administration in July to prevent this data collection. On Oct. 15, a Northern California court issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the transfer of CalFresh recipient data to the agriculture department.
Using data to help food stamp access
The previous law that allowed data sharing was originally written to expand paid family leave, but the bill was deactivated in September 2023. Wicks and co-author Assemblymember Corey Jackson, a Democrat from Riverside, reintroduced the bill in late August 2024, with an entirely new focus on CalFresh. Within one month, it passed both the Assembly and the Senate and was approved by the governor.
The law granted state and local entities the authority to flag Californians eligible for CalFresh, allowing them to bypass all existing state laws to do so. The law authorized departments overseeing justice, veteran services, employment, financial aid, and homelessness, as well as all three public higher education systems, to share data. Types of data included utility bills, criminal records, immigration and tax records, and health information.
There was no limit on what kinds of information could be shared, which Bill Essayli, acting U.S. Central District Attorney and former Republican assemblymember representing the 63rd Assembly District, criticized.
End Child Poverty California, an advocacy network fighting to eradicate poverty, supported the previous law, saying data sharing could streamline CalFresh enrollment. If the state were provided data, they argued, households wouldn’t have to submit their own verification proving their food stamp eligibility, which could speed up the process.
Though the original law was entered late in the 2024 session, it garnered several opponents, including the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Oakland Privacy. The latter group argued to the Senate that the “preposterously broad” bill didn’t let Californians opt in or out of data sharing.
Assemblymember Alex Lee, a Democrat from San Jose, concurred with Oakland Privacy that the bill was “far too broad.”
“I'm deeply concerned how this will impact low-income individuals,” Lee had said on the Assembly floor. “This population deserves the same privacy as everyone in this room.”
Lee as well as Essayli took issue with the gut-and-amend process that allowed the legislators to completely change the bill without approval from any Assembly policy committees. When bills are rushed in this way, Essayli said, they “can have unintended consequences.”
However, Wicks promised to add clauses limiting the bill’s scope during the following year. Four assemblymembers voted no on the bill, three of them Republicans and the last one being Lee. Newsom signed the bill into law on Sept. 28, 2024.
Clean-up leads to limitations
Wicks proposed initial drafts of the clean-up bill in early 2025. Early drafts set some limits on the scope of shareable data, but were “pretty weak,” according to Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director for Oakland Privacy.
Another draft of the bill removed the sharing of public data related to income and health. It also required the data only be used for CalFresh outreach, facilitating enrollment, and measuring impact. To Rosenberg, this “catch-all” language was still too broad, and still would have “justified… using the data for all kinds of things.”
Oakland Privacy collaborated with Wicks to draft this year’s bill, and Rosenberg noted Wicks was very open to protecting people’s privacy. “We think the changing political environment probably played a role,” she said.
As proven by federal probes into Medi-Cal data, Rosenberg said, California’s social services department couldn’t guarantee their data was safe from federal interference. “That was certainly a concern in 2024, but it’s a much bigger concern in 2025,” she said.
Finally, after facing Senate amendments, the last bill draft removed authorization for the data sharing entirely. The bill passed the Senate and Assembly with only two dissenting votes in total, and was signed by Newsom and chaptered into law on Oct. 13.
CalFresh data is crucial for colleges
Not all aspects of the data sharing law were rescinded this week. For example, the state social services department is still tasked with developing a methodology for estimating the rate of CalFresh participation, to be released to the public each year.
The department will also determine the typical characteristics of people who are CalFresh-eligible, including but not limited to “race, ethnicity, preferred language, age, and location.” The department is required to develop marketing schemes that correspond to these demographics. Promoting CalFresh in underserved communities could make for more “equitable” SNAP access, Jackson said.
The department is also required to identify all public data sets that could name potential CalFresh participants.
State social services will not receive county data under this new law. But according to the people who run CalFresh programs at colleges and universities, analyzing participation is critical at the local level.
At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, almost 30% of all students are on CalFresh, according to Olivia Watts, program manager of CalFresh outreach at the university. She largely attributes the program’s success to their close relationship with the San Luis Obispo Department of Social Services.
Through the data provided by that department, the university learned that half of all CalFresh applicants in the county are its students.
The data they receive is scrubbed of personal information, Watts said. It’s just numbers, which she said are integral to CalFresh functionality. “Without knowing how many students are enrolled, it makes it difficult for us to do our job, to really see, are we making progress?”
Other university programs strive for that kind of open information. Amy Gonzales, Cal Fresh director at Chico State, has repeatedly requested CalFresh participation data from her local social services department in Butte County. They rejected the requests.
But according to Tiffany Rowe, director of Butte County’s Department of Employment and Social Services, the department doesn’t have direct access to that data, and would have to request it from the state. If they had that data, she said, they wouldn’t deny Chico State’s access.
With access to data, Gonzales said, the CalFresh program at Chico State could improve its outreach initiatives. They could attempt to target student groups that are eligible but under-enrolled.
Gonzales would be “all about” data sharing, even across the state, as long as the information is shared with “trusted” agencies. “I think it can be very beneficial to share that eligibility data,” she said, and flag people for different social service programs based on their characteristics.
Still, Gonzales manages to conduct outreach without countywide data. At Chico State, she partners with some of the college’s academic programs and workplaces to find students eligible for CalFresh.
College students are eligible for food assistance based on their participation in employment training programs. Certain majors count toward this criteria. Students are often unaware of their eligibility, which is why targeted outreach is important, Gonzales said.
But though she’d appreciate data on eligible people, “I do have concerns with data sharing, given the current administration’s priorities and what they have requested,” she said.
Watts and Gonzales both help students at their universities with CalFresh applications. They both said they wish that all college students were automatically eligible for the program.
Under the new law, counties can continue to harvest data about the efficacy of their own CalFresh programs. They’re just prevented from sharing data on eligible individuals with the state. But interagency relationships at local levels, Watts said, need to be protected.
“We’ve had a lot of success… because of our ability to share data, and communicate in these ways, and problem-solve together,” Watts said.
Phoebe Huss is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
