Wisconsin will officially join the 22 U.S. states that have sought permission from the federal government to ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from purchasing candy and/or soda with their benefits.

Gov. Tony Evers signed AB 180, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 116, on Monday. In his remarks, Evers celebrated additional funds included in the bill that are meant to keep the state’s payment error rate low but ignored the candy and soda ban that the law will also implement.

Evers, who is serving out his final term in office, said in a statement that he was glad to sign the bill.

“In spite of the chaos at the federal level and the continued attacks on our FoodShare program, I am proud of the work my administration has done over the past year to ensure our kids, families, veterans and seniors across our state receive the resources they need to access basic food and groceries. As long as I am governor, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect Wisconsin families and taxpayers from the harmful decisions of the Trump Administration,” he said in the statement released by his office. 

The bill, coauthored by Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), initially sought only to implement the ban, but additional funds were attached through an amendment after negotiations with Evers. 

Evers started seeking additional state funds for FoodShare last year after President Donald Trump signed a federal tax and spending law that made many changes to the SNAP program. Those changes included cutting the federal government’s coverage of administrative costs from 75% to 50%, eliminating funding for nutrition education programs and steepening penalties for states that have payment error rates over 6%. 

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republicans across the country, including in Wisconsin, have been pushing to ban soda and candy for SNAP recipients, saying it will help keep people healthy. Democrats have criticized the measure, saying it will stigmatize already disadvantaged children and families. Several Democrats, including Evers, provided support for the measure after lawmakers attached more than $70 million for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to support administration of the program. 

The Wisconsin DHS had estimated that federal penalties could cost the state over $200 million a year. 

DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson said in a statement that “ensuring the FoodShare program has the resources we need to meet new federal requirements is critical to maintaining access to essential nutrition benefits for Wisconsin families and saving Wisconsin taxpayer dollars.”

Wisconsin will now submit a waiver to the federal government to implement its candy and soda prohibition. The bill also includes more than $3 million so the state health department  can create and maintain an electronic platform to help with implementation of the prohibition.

Evers told reporters last week that he didn’t agree with barring people from buying certain foods but it was “one of those things called compromise.”

A bill barring Wisconsin’s nearly 700,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from buying candy and soda with their benefits, while providing additional funding and positions to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) is on its way to Gov. Tony Evers.

A provision in the federal tax and spending law signed by President Donald Trump last year penalizes states that have a SNAP payment error rate above 6%. The Evers administration has sought additional funding to increase staffing to keep Wisconsin’s error rate low. Evers estimates Wisconsin could lose up to $205 million annually from a penalty.

Evers had been requesting lawmakers to take action since August, just a month after the federal law was signed. After negotiations with Evers, lawmakers attached the money to AB 180, coauthored by Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), that would prohibit recipients from using their benefits to buy candy and soda. 

The money will go towards a FoodShare employment and training program as well as covering administrative costs that have been shifted from the federal government to the state and creating quality control initiatives to help keep FoodShare error rates low. 

Evers did not mention the ban on candy and soda in his statement on the legislation, instead focusing on the new money and positions. 

“Unfortunately, thanks to changes under President Trump and Republicans’ so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ things could get a whole lot worse for folks across Wisconsin — and our state’s bottom line,” Evers said in his statement. “Wisconsin taxpayers are already on the hook for over $284 million in future state budgets because of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ so it was important that we get this bill done to help make sure Wisconsinites don’t have to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars more in penalty fees to the Trump Administration every year.” 

Evers told reporters on Wednesday that he disagrees with the candy and soda ban and thinks “people should have the ability to make those choices when they’re getting their food,” but the other provisions were “really important.”

“It’s one of those things called compromise,” Evers said. “This definitely takes precedence, so it’s all good.”

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been encouraging states to institute candy and soda bans for SNAP recipients  with the stated goal of helping improve health and address chronic illness rates.

It is unclear whether the bill will have a demonstrable effect on people’s health.

UW-Madison food insecurity expert Judith Bartfeld told the Examiner in May 2025, as lawmakers were debating the bill, that the SNAP program was “intended to provide extra resources to support buying food at the store — and its effectiveness in reducing food insecurity is well documented,” but that there “have long been concerns that restricting how benefits can be used would make things more complicated for retailers, more stigmatizing for participants, unlikely to translate into meaningful health improvements, and would risk reducing participation and jeopardizing the well documented benefits of SNAP on food security.”

Another change to SNAP under the federal tax and spending law included the elimination of funding in September 2025 for the SNAP education program SNAP-Ed, which provided cooking classes and information on healthy eating to beneficiaries. According to FoodBank News, food banks, including the Hunger Task Force in Wisconsin which lost about $467,000 in federal funds, had to rethink educating their clients on nutrition.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are 22 states that have submitted waivers to the federal government to implement a prohibition on purchasing soda, candy and/or energy drinks using SNAP benefits. Colorado and Hawaii are the only other states with a Democratic governor that have approved a version of a ban.

In addition to the $69 million and 70 positions for the Wisconsin DHS to help ensure quality control of SNAP, the bill included $3 million in 2025-26 for the development of a FoodShare platform for product eligibility as well as $250,000 in each 2025-26 and 2026-27 to help with the administration of the platform.

The bill passed the Senate in a 25-8 vote. Sen. Jodi Habush (D-Whitefish Bay), Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) and Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie) joined Republicans in favor of the legislation. 

Some Democratic lawmakers criticized the provision during floor debate.

“Fundamentally, I have a problem with the idea that we need to be here, the Legislature, telling people who need money on their Quest card to put food on their table, that we need to micromanage what food they buy for themselves and their families,” Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said. “You know what, kids from families that qualify for FoodShare might deserve a little candy and soda now and then, too. And ultimately, I think we all want to support health… but micromanaging the grocery purchases of low-income folks is not the way to accomplish that.” 

Spreitzer said many in the Senate Democratic caucus, whether they supported or opposed the legislation, were voting from “a place of frustration” due to the money being tied to the ban. 

“This is ugly, ugly politics in this building, and I wish it had not come to this,” he said. “I wish we could’ve all come together and said, ‘Let’s provide the money to the staff that is needed to run FoodShare, and then let’s debate separately this other bill.’”

During a Joint Finance Committee meeting on March 11 when the bill was discussed, Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) recalled her 10 years working as a child care provider in Milwaukee, serving “some of the state’s poorest kids” who were “also extremely bright, extremely talented and extremely resilient.” She said the bill should have focused on ensuring  that vulnerable people have resources to feed their families instead of monitoring the type of food in their carts. 

“Some of these kids, the vast majority of them don’t get to have these luxuries all the time at home. Their parents, regardless of what this body may believe, aren’t constantly supplying kids with soda and with candy,” Johnson said.

A 2016 USDA study found that “there were no major differences in the expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households, no matter how the data were categorized,” and that SNAP recipients, similar to non-SNAP recipients, spent about 20 cents of every dollar on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar.

Johnson said she had an experience in 2013 that highlighted to her the decisions that some families were making when the daycare ran out of milk during the day. She said she went to the nearby gas station where a gallon of milk cost $5, a stark difference from a local grocery store in Wauwatosa where she would buy two gallons of milk for $5.

“After I bought that gallon of milk and I walked out, I realized why, in some cases, our poorer families were buying two liters of sodas versus a gallon of milk,” Johnson said. “Back then, a two liter of soda was $1.19 all day long. A gallon of milk was $5. It wasn’t about choosing unhealthy food. It was about making those food stamp dollars stretch as long as possible, so those kids could continue to eat.”

The Wisconsin Assembly passed a bill that will ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from being able to buy soda and candy with their benefits and will provide funding and positions to the state Department of Health Services to help preempt the state from being penalized by the federal government. 

Lawmakers also approved a bill aimed at having the state turn SNAP data over to the Trump administration.

Gov. Tony Evers and lawmakers have been discussing providing additional funding and positions to the state Department of Health Services to ensure the state keeps its payment error rate low, to avoid costly federal penalties enacted as part of a huge national tax cut and spending bill.

A SNAP provision in the federal tax and spending law signed by President Donald Trump last year would penalize states for having a payment error rate above 6%. The Evers administration has estimated a penalty due to the error rate could cost the state up to $205 million. Evers recently urged lawmakers in his State of the State address on Tuesday to provide money to the state agency to keep the error rate low and avoid potential penalties.

Lawmakers attached the money and positions to AB 180 in an amendment. The bill passed 71-22 with 23 Democrats joining Republicans in favor of the bill. 

The amendment included about $69 million and 70 positions for the agency to help ensure quality control of SNAP — also known as FoodShare in Wisconsin — and keep the error rate low.

When it comes to the candy and soda ban provisions, the Wisconsin DHA would need to submit a waiver to the federal government for approval to make the change to the program. 

Under the leadership of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, the Trump administration has pushed for the ban across the country as a part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved waivers for 18 states, including Idaho and Oklahoma, so far, and there are at least five states that are actively implementing the ban.

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) criticized the bill, saying it “has nothing to do with health,” mentioning he sees people drinking Diet Mountain Dew and other beverages in the Legislature’s chambers, and that the bill is merely “punishing people for poverty.” He also said it is “shameful” to use the candy and soda ban bill to move the money and positions forward. 

“I’m glad that with the amendment there are necessary dollars here that are coming to help our agencies provide dozens of staff members to push back on the onslaught from the Trump regime,” Clancy said. An amendment to the bill includes $3.5 million to help with development and administration of a food stamp platform that is meant to ensure grocery stores can follow the ban. 

Rep. Russell Goodwin (D-Milwaukee) said lawmakers shouldn’t be “policing check-out lanes” and that the bill will create a two-tiered system where poor families have their food choices restricted. 

Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) said that the bill would ensure that taxpayers are not paying the costs of people eating unhealthy foods. 

“The original intent… was to go down a path to start looking at what we’re feeding our children, what we’re feeding our families and what’s that doing to our families,” Moses said, adding that he has been interested in the issue long before the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. 

Moses said “the amount of money that we could lose from the federal government is astronomical” if the bill doesn’t become law.

Under the bill, candy is defined as “any solid, semi-solid, or molded preparation of sugar, sweeteners, whether natural or artificial, or chocolate, with or without added ingredients such as flavorings, fruit, nuts, or flour, that is commonly marketed, advertised, or recognized as candy, chocolate bar, chewing gum, or similar confectionery and includes chocolate bars, including chocolate bars containing flour, hard candies, gummies, caramels, taffy, licorice, mints, and chewing gum.” It does not include baked goods. 

Soda is defined as a “nonalcoholic beverage that contains natural or artificial sweeteners, including soda, pop, cola, energy drinks, sports drinks, or flavored water, or any product, regardless of its ingredients or labeling, that is marketed, labeled, or advertised as a soda, pop, cola, energy drink or energy supplement.” It does not include beverages that include milk or coffee or unsweetened tea.

A separate bill would require Wisconsin to compile and turn over data to the federal government on all Wisconsin FoodShare recipients since 2020 in accordance with a July letter from the federal Department of Agriculture. The Trump administration says it is seeking the data so it can investigate fraud and has threatened to cut off SNAP benefits to states that don’t comply. The Assembly passed the bill, AB 1027, in a 54-39 vote with Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) joining Republicans in favor.

On behalf of Wisconsin, Attorney General Josh Kaul joined a lawsuit with 21 other states to block the order. A federal judge in California recently granted the request for a temporary restraining order.

Rep. Ryan Spaude (D-Ashwaubenon) accused his Republican colleagues of being “happy to take up the bidding of the Trump administration” with the passage of the bill. 

No Republicans spoke on the bill. 

Evers has expressed opposition to turning over the data, saying that Wisconsin’s system works. He told WISN 12 in December that the SNAP system is “analyzed every single year and we feel confident in it.” 

“We have people in the state of Wisconsin that need help making sure they’re having nutritious meals. We feel the program right now is working just fine,” he said. 

Both bills need to pass the Senate before they go to Evers.