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.”

Advocates are urging state lawmakers to help Wisconsin absorb new administrative costs as a result of federal changes to the nation’s primary food assistance program.

Changes made to Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program (SNAP) benefits in the mega bill signed by President Donald Trump last year will add $69.2 million to the cost of Wisconsin’s FoodShare program in the current two-year budget, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The agency administers the FoodShare program.

The federal mega bill, which Trump signed on July 4, cut taxes along with spending on some federal programs, including SNAP.

A letter from 165 participating groups asks legislators “to take immediate action to provide funding for these changes. Additional delays in providing this funding will put Wisconsin taxpayers at risk of paying for increased costs and will negatively impact communities, businesses, and SNAP recipients across Wisconsin.”

The coalition of social service, food industry and advocacy organizations held a press conference Wednesday to call for the added state support.

“At an average of $6 per person per day, SNAP supports nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, and also supports local economies with each dollar in SNAP benefits, generating between $1.50 and $1.80 in economic activity,” said Jackie Anderson, executive director of Feeding Wisconsin.

The press conference coincided with a lobbying day for the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, one of the coalition members

“FoodShare brings more than a billion dollars of spending power into our state every year, and a large share of that is returned to Wisconsin producers, and in particular, dairy producers, that flows not only through grocery stores, but back through cheese plants and into dairy farms like the one my family owns,” said Andy Hatch, the owner of Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville and the cheesemakers’ association’s policy chair.

“This is a bipartisan issue” — one that the association’s members, Republicans and Democrats alike, “have all agreed on,” Hatch added. “Our core mission is to feed people and to support our communities, rural and urban, and is why we’ve come together with people across the state to ask our lawmakers to fund the requested $69 million and make sure that there is not a disruption to FoodShare.”

The request includes funding to add administrative staff to avoid errors in the state’s operation of the program. Among the changes to SNAP is a penalty that would require states to pick up some of the benefit costs if their errors exceed 6%. State officials have said that could cost Wisconsin up to $205 million.

The $69 million that the state has estimated it will require to implement those changes was not included in the 2025-27 state budget. Gov. Tony Evers’s office said he had told lawmakers about the need last August, and Evers highlighted the coalition’s call in a statement Thursday.

“Because of President Trump’s so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ Wisconsin taxpayers will already be on the hook for over a quarter of a billion dollars in new costs in future budgets,” Evers said.

“And if we don’t get the resources we’ve been asking for in order to keep our FoodShare error rate low, Wisconsinites could have to pay hundreds of millions even more in penalty fees each year,” he added. “That just cannot happen—it will cripple future state budgets. This funding is critical, and the Legislature must get this done.” 

The request includes $16.1 million to add staff in order to ensure that FoodShare is administered accurately. The new federal law requires states with SNAP error rates exceeding 6% to cover from 5% to 15% of the benefit costs starting in October 2027.

Wisconsin’s error rate in 2024 was 4.47%, the state health department said in a news release in August. The error rate flags instances when recipients get too much or too little SNAP aid or the state makes other mistakes in the program.

“However, rates naturally fluctuate, and even more so when the federal government changes program policies and standards with virtually no notice and is inconsistent with its definition of an error,” the health department release stated.

If the error rate rises and requires Wisconsin to start paying some of the benefit costs, that could cost the state up to $205 million a year, according to the Wisconsin DHS.

To hold down the state’s “historically low error rate while implementing the other provisions” in the federal law and to maintain quality control in administering FoodShare, the state and Wisconsin counties combined will need to add 56 employees, according to the health department.

The new federal law also increases the state’s share of administrative costs for SNAP from 50% to 75%, starting Oct. 1, 2026. That will cost the state an additional $32.4 million.

In addition, the law expanded work requirements for people who receive SNAP, which the Wisconsin DHS estimates would affect about 43,700 Wisconsin FoodShare recipients.

The new requirements affect anyone ages 18 to 64 without a child under 14 at home, including parents with children ages 14 to 17, who were previously exempt from work requirements. Previously work requirements applied to adults age 54 or younger without any children under 18 at home.

The state has estimated it would need an additional $20.7 million to increase participation in the FoodShare employment and training program for recipients who have work requirements and aren’t working already.

Reno Wright, public policy and advocacy director at the Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee, said more than 40% of FoodShare recipients are children, with about one in four Wisconsin children living in a household that uses FoodShare sometime during the year.

“Research shows that SNAP reduces child poverty by nearly 30% and is linked to long-term health and educational outcomes, but those outcomes depend on a system that functions efficiently,” Wright said. The funding sought for the program “ensures that the department has the staffing and the infrastructure needed to prevent delays and disruptions as new federal requirements take effect.”

There is not a stand-alone bill in the Legislature currently for the additional funding, but advocates hope an amendment could be added to another piece of  legislation that would fund SNAP.

A bill in the Assembly seeks to order the Evers administration to follow a White House demand and turn over data on all Wisconsin food aid recipients since 2020 — despite a lawsuit that has put the federal demand on hold.

AB 1027 would give the administration six months to compile and share with the U.S. Department of Agriculture “all data” that USDA demanded in a letter to the states this past summer on applicants and recipients of benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program (SNAP).

SNAP funds the state’s FoodShare program.  The letter threatened to cut off SNAP benefits to states that didn’t comply with USDA’s data demand.

Wisconsin is one of 21 states along with the District of Columbia that have sued to block the demand, and a federal judge in California granted the request for a temporary restraining order in their favor. The case remains in litigation.

On Wednesday, the nine Assembly health committee Republicans who were present voted to advance the bill after holding a public hearing with just two witnesses. All five Democrats voted against the measure.

In the hearing, Rep. Nate Gustafson (R-Omro), the bill’s author, said it doesn’t change who is eligible for FoodShare.

“It is focused solely on compliance with the existing federal requirements, so that funding continues without disruption, and Wisconsin citizens can keep receiving the benefits that they have been promised,” Gustafson said.

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) asked Gustafson exactly what information was being demanded from the state.

“I’m trying to figure out the motivation for wanting this data, and without a clear picture of what this includes, it certainly concerns me,” Subeck said. “Given what’s happening in the federal government right now, this raises a number of red flags.”

Gustafson said he had not spoken with the Department of Health Services, which administers the FoodShare program, but that in his view, “what this bill is trying to say is, why, we don’t have anything to hide, so let’s just comply.”

Subeck rejected the claim that the bill would help uncover fraud in the FoodShare program.

“I believe that we should absolutely root out any fraud that is in any of our programs,” she said. “I do not believe this bill does anything to address fraud.”

The only other hearing testimony was from Mike Semmann, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, which opposed the legislation. Wisconsin grocers have many customers who use FoodShare in order to meet their needs, Semmann told the committee.

“Many times Wisconsin’s retailers are on the front line, and they’re going to be the ones who are going to be asked the questions about the program and about the concept of what’s going on with their information,” Semmann said. “And we just think that due to everything that is going on with both the potential pending litigation, but other additional questions, that right now to pass a piece of legislation at this time is just a little bit premature.”