Hunger Free America Sues USDA To Maintain National Hunger Hotline and Clearinghouse
Information on Food Resources Is Terminated While White House and Republicans in Congress Push for Steep Food Aid Cuts
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Hunger Free America, a nonpartisan nonprofit group, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the termination of funding for the National Hunger Clearinghouse and toll-free hotline. Hunger Free America is being represented pro bono by Public Citizen Litigation Group.
For more than 30 years, Congress has required USDA to contract with a nonprofit organization to serve as an “information clearinghouse” for food assistance resources. Hunger Free America has held the contract for establishing and maintaining the clearinghouse since 2014, helping tens of thousands of individuals and families access food banks, soup kitchens, and government programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Summer Food Service Program.
In May 2025, without any explanation or warning, USDA informed Hunger Free America that it would not be exercising the option for the second year of the 5-year contract. Since then, USDA has taken no action to fulfill its statutory obligation to ensure that a nonprofit anti-hunger organization maintains the Hotline and Clearinghouse as a resource.
“For more than a decade, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of hungry Americans access food, from both government programs and faith and community-based charities,” said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America. “Cutting off this vital service would be cruel, arbitrary, and capricious at any time. Doing so precisely when the Administration and Congress are pushing the greatest cuts in food assistance in U.S. history is particularly heartless and counter-productive. This act is clearly illegal, so we are so grateful that Public Citizen is taking up our case rapidly and at no charge to our modestly-funded organization.”
The USDA’s termination of the nation’s top food access information resource comes shortly after House Republicans passed a budget reconciliation package that would slash roughly one trillion dollars in health care and food assistance from limited income Americans to pay for a new round of tax cuts that would give the greatest benefits to the wealthiest Americans. If the bill is passed by the Senate, the cuts to food assistance alone would total around $300 billion, constituting the greatest reduction in food assistance in U.S. history.
In the more than 10 years that Hunger Free America ran the Clearinghouse and Hotline on behalf of USDA, the organization helped 228,735 callers — both struggling families and community-based service providers — learn where and how they can access private and public sources of food near them. Hunger Free America performed that work for only $250,000 per year in federal funding.
“The National Hunger Hotline can mean the difference between vulnerable Americans getting food on the table and going hungry,” said Cormac Early, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel on this case. “Congress required USDA to fund the hotline, and the decision not to is both cruel and unlawful.”
The full complaint is available here. To request an interview, contact eleach@citizen.org.