Resource: Harris v. Eggleston

In 2002, Mental Health Project (“MHP”) lawyers discovered that the New York City Human Resources Administration (“HRA”) was illegally terminating food stamps of people in desperate need, and filed this federal class action to address the problem. Despite years of warnings from the United States Department of Agriculture, HRA and the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance employed a computer program that automatically terminated the food stamps of welfare recipients who were approved for SSI (the federal benefit for people who are poor and severely disabled), despite their eligibility under the Food Stamps Act.