Earlier this year, we wrote about some of the federal changes arriving to SNAP between 2025 and 2027. Prior to this year, states covered half the administrative costs associated with SNAP and none of the benefit costs. With the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, however, states are now required to pay 75% of administrative costs and a portion of benefit costs. According to the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, state budgets for SNAP are more than doubling due to changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
At the start of this year, my colleague Michael predicted that changes to SNAP benefits would be one of the biggest economic stories of 2026, and we’re now seeing these changes take effect. Between the July 2025 passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the start of the year, the use of federal food assistance is down in every state and Washington, D.C. Overall, nearly 3.5 million people have lost access to SNAP benefits.
The states that have been hit the hardest by changes to SNAP are Georgia, Arizona, Florida, California and Texas. All five of these states are among the top fifteen most populous states in the country. This means that proportionally, it makes sense for these states to have lost the most SNAP enrollees. However, at Scioto Analysis, we’re most interested in state and local policymaking. Today, I looked into each of these five states to try to understand the key driving factors in SNAP reduction for each state.
Georgia
Between July 2025 and January 2026, more than 460,000 residents in Georgia have lost access to SNAP. Even after this reduction, roughly one in six Georgia residents (~1.4 million people) receive SNAP benefits each month, slotting Georgia in as the sixth-highest state in the nation for SNAP participation.
In addition, Georgia lawmakers have proposed stricter legislation that would require citizenship verification, annual recertification, and heavier limitations on which items Georgia SNAP recipients can buy at the grocery store. These new restrictions could result in even fewer Georgia residents maintaining access to SNAP benefits due to administrative churn or stigma.
Arizona
Between July 2025 and January 2026, the number of SNAP recipients in Arizona plummeted by about 42%, from nearly about 880,000 to just 510,000. As of April, that number dropped to a meager 235,000 recipients. Across nine months, around nine percent of the total population in Arizona lost access to SNAP.
Since last year, Arizona has been struggling with a massive backlog of SNAP applications, with some families still waiting for updates after initially applying in August. Arizona was a state that moved quickly to overhaul their SNAP application process, meaning that other states may start to experience similar backlogs. The Arizona Department of Economic Security attributes the backlog to a new program that complies with new payment error rate requirements.
The combination of stricter SNAP regulations and rising grocery prices have stretched family budgets across the state. Some food banks in Arizona have reported a 17% increase in traffic compared to this time last year.
Florida
In Florida, about 270,000 have lost access to SNAP benefits between July 2025 and January 2026. SNAP recipients temporarily faced weeks of SNAP benefit suspension due to the government shutdown last fall. Florida residents briefly saw their full benefits reinstated in mid-November before facing Florida’s implementation of new federal SNAP requirements at the start of December. The groups most impacted by the volatile SNAP eligibility in Florida are seniors and veterans.
Florida also faces one of the highest payment error rates in the country, at around 15%. This error payment rate exceeds the new federal requirement to keep payment error rates below 6% to avoid harsh financial penalties. To help reduce payment errors, Florida legislators have proposed funding a new artificial intelligence system designed to reduce payments made in error. The proposal would include $4 million to implement machine learning techniques aimed at identifying root causes of incorrect SNAP eligibility determinations and recommending improvements to solve such problems.
If implemented correctly, artificial intelligence solutions to incorrect eligibility determinations could save Florida millions of dollars in funding in the long-run. However, there are many risks associated with the increased use of artificial intelligence in benefits programs, such as reinforcing inequities related to race, gender, immigration status, or other demographic categories.
California
From July 2025 to January 2026, 260,000 SNAP recipients lost their benefits in California. One policy change unique to California from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that may have contributed to this initial drop is a utility-related loophole that the act closed at the start of November. In the past, California gave families a tiny annual energy payment which triggered a special utility deduction that lowered their counted income and boosted their monthly food assistance. Now, households without a senior or a person with a disability can no longer use this workaround, which has shrunk monthly benefits and removed thousands of people from the program due to new paperwork hurdles.
One of the provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act limits SNAP eligibility to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. California has the largest unauthorized immigrant population in the country at about 2.9 million people, accounting for about 20% of the nation’s total unauthorized immigrant population, and the second-largest refugee population in the United States. This means that changes to SNAP eligibility for immigrant populations disproportionately impacts California residents. The immigrant related eligibility changes went into effect in California at the start of April, and a total of 72,000 humanitarian immigrants are expected to lose SNAP coverage in addition to the 260,000 residents who already lost coverage.
Texas
From July 2025 to January 2026, around 250,000 SNAP recipients lost coverage in Texas. More recent state data shows that around 500,000 fewer residents are eligible for SNAP in Texas between April 2025 and May 2026. Many residents who lost SNAP benefits lost coverage due to stricter work requirements.
However, a more unique issue that Texas residents are facing regarding SNAP benefits relates to harsher immigration crackdowns over the past year. Similar to California, Texas has much higher immigrant populations than the rest of the country. Many Texas households include undocumented immigrants who were already ineligible for SNAP benefits but had children or family members in the household who could claim SNAP benefits. Texas is one of at least 27 states who forwarded SNAP information to the Department of Homeland Security. Because of this, many children or family members of undocumented immigrants have foregone federal assistance to mitigate risks of deportation.
Looking Ahead
Moving forward, many states plan to introduce the stricter SNAP regulations outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act starting in June and for the rest of 2026. As state and local governments continue to implement these regulations, SNAP coverage is likely to worsen across the country even more.
