The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed and remanded a decision ordering the release of federal benefit recipient data to the federally appointed receiver JXN Water.
For over a year, JXN Water and its chief Ted Henifin have hoped to implement a first-of-its-kind discount for Jackson customers who receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The water and wastewater utility, though, doesn’t have access to names of the city’s SNAP recipients, which it says greatly limits its ability to apply the discount.
Without the ability to automatically apply the discount, JXN Water relies on customers coming forward to confirm their eligibility. The utility told Mississippi Today on Friday that fewer than 10 people have signed up for the discount, which went into effect in February, 2024.
Almost exactly a year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate ordered Mississippi and federal agencies to hand over a list of Jackson’s SNAP recipients to JXN Water on a quarterly basis. While the Mississippi Department of Human Services maintained that it could lose federal funding by disclosing recipients’ names, Wingate said JXN Water’s discount qualified as a federal assistance program and thus was an exception to the disclosure rule.
The 5th Circuit disagreed that JXN Water’s discount could be considered a federal assistance program. It added that, despite the utility being a federal receiver, it still has to comply with state law, which in this case prohibits the disclosure of participants’ names.
“The mere appointment of a federal receiver — even if the individual or entity is considered an officer of the court — does not grant federal power to the receiver,” Judge Dana Douglas wrote. “In other words, while JXN Water became an officer of the court and a federal receiver, its compliance with state and local law did not become a matter of federal law or administration of federal assistance.”
In a statement Friday afternoon, the third-party utility said it was “disappointed” in the court’s ruling.
“Access to this data would have allowed us to proactively reach households struggling to keep up, rather than waiting for them to come to us,” JXN Water said. “This decision is a hurdle, but it does not change our commitment. We remain steadfast in finding new paths to identify and appropriately classify customers eligible for relief under the JXN Water SNAP Customer Classification to ensure affordability and protect access to water for the most vulnerable members of our community.”
There are about 12,500 SNAP recipients in Jackson. But, as the Gulf States Newsroom reported, just about 62% of those eligible in Mississippi receive the benefit, according to federal data. Most people who receive the utility’s SNAP discount would pay about $30 less per month than the average customer, according to a breakdown JXN Water provided last year.
The decision comes as JXN Water is set to raise its rates for the second time in as many years. The increase, which Henifin said on Tuesday would begin in June at the earliest, would average out at around 12% for a customer’s monthly bill.
While Henifin can impose a rate increase without approval from city officials, council members pushed back on the proposal on Tuesday, the Clarion Ledger reported, calling the increase too steep and criticizing the utility for not first improving collection rates. Henifin, though, recently said even with 100% collection the current rates wouldn’t yield enough revenue to run operations. He said that it’s taken time to fully realize how much it costs to run the city’s water and wastewater services.
When asked on Tuesday if he and city officials were on the same page as far as billing, Henifin just said, “No,” and laughed.
Update 4/11/24: This story has been updated to include a response from JXN Water.
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