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Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.8.2.4 Benefit Adjustments Based on State Claims Against Recipients

A state agency may assert a claim against the recipient for trafficking187 or overpayments caused by system errors or incorrect determination of a benefit amount.188 The food stamp regulations contain specific rules for calculating and collecting the claim, depending upon whether it is an intentional violation by the household, is unintended or due to a household’s misunderstanding, or is an erroneous overpayment by the agency.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.8.2.5 Recipient Rights to Notice and Fair Hearing

Department of Agriculture regulations require a state to give timely and adequate notice before debiting a recipient’s EBT account to correct an alleged error.199 The notice must be sent to the recipient at least ten days before the adverse action is taken, and the notice must clearly explain the adverse action and the recipient’s rights.200 Recipients have ninety days from the date of the notice of the adjustment to request a fair hearing.201 If t

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.8.3 Cash Assistance Error Resolution and Hearing Rights

The error resolution procedures provided in the food stamp regulations do not apply to cash benefit transactions. The QUEST operating rules, which are used by most jurisdictions,204 include procedures for cash benefit error resolution. These rules are very technical and apply mostly to disputes between the EBT contractor and the ATM and POS equipment owners and do not provide step-by-step procedures for recipients. Except for the QUEST rules, error resolution procedures for cash benefits vary from state to state.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.8.4 Maintaining EBT Account Records: Transaction Histories

Food stamp regulations require that, upon a recipient’s request, the state must provide a written transaction history covering all food stamp activity on the account for the past sixty days. A written transaction history enables recipients to maintain records of spending on an EBT account and provides a means to verify proper credits and debits from the account. This verification process is essential for accurate account transactions and to aid recipients in error resolution proceedings.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.1 General

The population qualifying for public assistance is diverse, and a successful EBT program must ensure that adequate services exist to meet the special needs of all recipients. Special-needs recipients may include those who are physically disabled, visually impaired, deaf, hard-of-hearing, speech-impaired, mentally impaired, functionally illiterate, homeless, residing in a group-living facility, or lacking in English language proficiency.207

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.2.1 Applicability to EBT and Other ATM Transactions

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination by places of public accommodation on the basis of a person’s disability.215 Places of public accommodation include service establishments, such as banks.216 A disability under the ADA is a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual.217 A public accommodation is required to make reasonable modifications for persons

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.2.3 Private ADA Litigation

The ADA authorizes a private right of action, and a court may order the public accommodation to alter facilities, provide services, and change its policies.228 Successful plaintiffs also are entitled to attorney fees and costs.229 Monetary damages are not recoverable by private parties but may be sought in actions brought by the United States Attorney General.230 A claim under a state law protecting the disabled often will provide for compensatory

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.1 Introduction

Blind and visually impaired recipients face unique challenges in navigating an EBT system. One way to accommodate these special needs is to provide an alternative to EBT benefits delivery. Allowing blind state cash assistance recipients to opt out of EBT and receive a paper check instead may be the best accommodation possible, although an opt-out is possible only for state benefits. Accommodations for blind and visually impaired recipients should include specialized training and training materials as well as mechanical accommodations to ATM and POS equipment.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.2 Training and Written Materials for the Blind and Visually Impaired

All training and other written EBT materials, whether provided at the time of training or during the ongoing use of the EBT system, should be available in alternate formats that are accessible to blind and visually impaired recipients. These include Braille documents, large-print versions, and oral recordings. Videotaped materials used in EBT training or support should include full narration to describe the material being presented.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.3.1 Nature of the problem

Issues particular to blind and visually impaired recipients arise in the everyday use of an EBT system. With paper food stamp coupons, as with paper currency from a cashed assistance check, many blind and visually impaired recipients could devise personal systems for differentiating the coupons or bills. For example, a visually impaired individual may horizontally fold all $10 bills while vertically folding $20 bills or keep all coupons of a particular denomination in the front wallet pocket and another denomination in the wallet’s back pocket.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.4.3.3 Access to account balances

Blind and visually impaired recipients should have an accessible means of acquiring account balance information. Typically, this information is found either on the EBT transaction receipt or the ATM screen. Neither of these formats is accessible for blind and visually impaired recipients, who will have to depend on a store clerk, a stranger at an ATM, or some other third party to read this information off the machine’s screen or the printed receipt. This limits the recipient’s autonomy and encourages fraud or theft of benefits.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.5.1 Training

Certain modifications must be made to the state’s standard training program to accommodate deaf, hard-of-hearing and speech-impaired recipients. For recipients who communicate through sign language, the most effective approach is to have a sign language interpreter available in local public assistance offices, either at all times or on a set schedule.246

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.6 Mentally Ill Recipients

Recipients with mental illness may have difficulty keeping track of the EBT card and remembering the PIN.254 In the event of a lost card or forgotten PIN, replacement services should be simple to access and prompt. The state should also consider the special needs of recipients with mental impairments when applying a limit to the number of replacement cards allowed per recipient.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.7.1 Introduction

States should also have procedures for issuing cards and materials to homeless recipients. If the state issues EBT cards and PINs through the mail, homeless recipients should be permitted to pick up the card, PIN, and EBT materials at local offices instead. A mail-only policy that does not allow recipients to pick EBT cards up at local offices presents a serious problem for eligible recipients who have no mailing address at which to receive the EBT card and materials. As discussed below, such a policy is likely unlawful, violating three different food stamp requirements.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.7.2 Mailing Address Cannot Be Eligibility Requirement for Food Stamps

According to USDA Food Stamp regulations, “[t]he State agency shall not require an otherwise eligible household to reside in a permanent dwelling or have a fixed mailing address as a condition of eligibility.”256 By requiring applicants to provide a mailing address to which an EBT card will be sent, the state effectively makes a mailing address a condition of eligibility in violation of federal law.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.8 Obtaining Benefits Through Group Living Facilities and Homeless Meal Providers

USDA has granted waivers to numerous states and the District of Columbia that permit group living facilities and homeless meal providers to act as retail food establishments. This allows group living facilities and homeless meal providers to deposit recipients’ food stamp benefits directly into the facility’s financial institution through the use of on-site POS equipment. Then the facility can make food purchases directly from its own bank account rather than from each recipient’s individual EBT account.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.9 Functionally Illiterate Recipients

Because of the mandatory EBT delivery system, recipients face a literacy requirement that was not present with paper coupons. Reading the prompts on an ATM or POS device to negotiate an electronic debit of funds or reading a transaction receipt or account transaction history requires greater reading skills than signing and cashing a paper check.

Consumer Banking and Payments Law: 8.9.10 Meeting Non-English Speakers’ Special Needs

In order for program instructions, training materials, and customer service lines to be accessible to all recipients, they should be made available in multiple languages. The SNAP regulations set standards for when states must provide program information and certification materials in languages other than English, as well as bilingual staff or interpreters.264

Collection Actions: 2.3.9.2 The Client

An important consideration in the decision whether to take the case is the client. Is the client likely to stay in touch throughout the whole length of the case, or is the client likely to lose interest and fail to attend a critical hearing? Are the client’s expectations unreasonably high, indicating it may be difficult to conclude the case to the client’s satisfaction?