By Ashley Burnside

Lawmakers are proposing dangerous cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to pay for tax breaks for the wealthiest people and corporations. These proposed changes could result in up to 11 million people losing some, or all, of their SNAP food benefits; increased food hardship; and fewer dollars being spent in grocery stores in our local economies. Disabled people will be hurt by these proposed policy changes, despite so-called exemptions being in place.  

SNAP provides monthly food benefits to individuals and families with low incomes and is one of our nation’s most effective anti-hunger public programs. It is also an important benefit for people with disabilities. Ten percent of the program’s non-elderly recipients identified as having a disability in 2023, and disabled people are more likely to face food insecurity. But SNAP can be hard to access for disabled people, and a time limit further restricts access for recipients known as “able-bodied adults without dependents,” or ABAWDs.  

Under current law, ABAWDs can only access SNAP for three months in a three-year period unless they are working for at least 20 hours per week. Lawmakers have created exceptions for areas with high unemployment rates and where time limit waivers are in place. SNAP benefits are cut off after three months even if recipients are still experiencing food insecurity and face barriers to obtaining employment.  

Lawmakers have proposed expanding the population that would fall under the ABAWD category, and who would therefore need to meet this work requirement, to include parents with children ages 7 and older and older adults ages 55 to 64. Parents with young children and older adults would be forced to work many hours per week or risk losing the food benefits that help them afford groceries each month. In addition, the proposal would significantly restrict state flexibility by limiting the United States Department of Agriculture’s ability to approve waivers only to areas with unemployment rates over 10 percent, and by reducing the allowable exempt population from the time limit policy from 8 percent to just 1 percent. These changes would make it much harder for states to protect vulnerable populations — including people with disabilities who may not be formally exempt but still face significant barriers to meeting work requirements. 

The ABAWD acronym implies that only able-bodied adults must meet the work requirement or face a time limit. But people with disabilities can also be negatively impacted by this policy because it can be challenging for them to prove they have a qualifying disability that prevents them from working and meeting the SNAP work requirement.   

SNAP policy requires recipients to be “physically or mentally unfit for employment” to qualify for an exemption from the time limit. The federal regulatory language for being “unfit” requires states to exempt people who:   

1. receive public or private disability benefits; 

2. are perceived as obviously “unfit” for employment by the program caseworker at the state agency; or 

3. have documentation from a qualifying medical professional stating they are “unfit” for employment.  

Each of these criteria can be challenging for people with disabilities to meet for the following reasons:   

1. Applying for and receiving disability benefits, such as Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance, is a long and cumbersome process. The application to receive disability benefits can take many months and can require a lawyer. In addition, the Social Security Administration is understaffed and underfunded, causing delays and customer service hiccups, and likely even more delays in the coming months. Even if someone is considered “disabled enough” to qualify for disability benefits, they may not be able to make it through the challenging application process to ultimately receive them.

2. A person may not be deemed “disabled enough” to qualify for an exemption from the SNAP work requirement and time limit, depending on a caseworker’s perceptions, stereotypes, and awareness of disabilities and chronic illnesses. Caseworkers may be biased by their lack of understanding of disabilities and how they function. This is especially true if the person has an invisible disability, like chronic pain or autism spectrum disorder, which is harder for others to observe. The caseworker’s perceptions may also be biased based on the recipient’s other identities, including race and gender. For example, caseworkers may minimize a Black applicant’s reported pain more than someone who is white due to their internal biases.

3. Accessing medical documentation proving your disability for an exemption from SNAP time limits can be challenging. Securing medical documentation of your disability requires numerous health appointments, access to transportation, money to afford the documentation, and health insurance. If you have a chronic illness, like Long COVID, it can be harder to secure a diagnosis from a medical provider and may require getting an appointment at a specialty clinic, which may have a months’ long waitlist. In addition, people with invisible disabilities and illnesses may face bias from medical providers who don’t believe their reported symptoms of pain. Research shows that women and people of color are more likely to face bias and skepticism from medical providers.  

Recently, Republican lawmakers have claimed that the new expansions to SNAP work requirements will not affect individuals with disabilities. However, this is not accurate. In practice, disabled people risk losing food assistance when lawmakers enforce time limits and work requirements, even when exemptions are included for people with disabilities. Many individuals with disabilities face barriers to accessing or proving eligibility for those exemptions, leaving them vulnerable to benefit loss. Work requirements don’t work and will not lead to better economic opportunities or help eradicate food insecurity. Lawmakers should not make these paperwork requirements worse in the SNAP program.