President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) into law in 1996. PRWORA institutionalized racism and xenophobia by making certain immigrants ineligible for food stamps and establishing a three-month time limit for many participants who were not working or in an approved work program for at least 20 hours a week. In addition, PRWORA required states, unless they explicitly opted out, to impose a lifetime ban on SNAP for people with a previous drug felony conviction. Florida chose to partially opt out of this lifetime ban — except for people with drug trafficking offenses — even though the ban impacts returning citizens’ ability to meet critical needs, such as food and housing, and increases their likelihood to re-offend and return to prison.
Food-insecure households of color throughout Florida were hit hard by the cuts imposed under PRWORA.
For immigrants made ineligible by PRWORA, Florida officials estimated that as many as 150,000 people in the state, who were then receiving $74 on average a month in food stamp coupons, would lose over $11 million each month unless they could prove that had worked in the United States for 10 years. Although President George W. Bush eventually reversed some of the cuts in PRWORA that kept immigrants out of the program in 2002, many of these restrictions are still on the books today.
Similarly, PRWORA’s lifetime eligibility ban on people with drug felony convictions had — and continues to have — a disparate impact on Black Floridians, who are more likely to be arrested on drug felony charges. By 2018, this ban had already cost the state more than $70 million in costs related to crime and incarcerating reoffenders.
The three-month time limit imposed by PRWORA, which is rooted in racist stereotypes of participants as reluctant to work, caused hundreds of thousands of people in Florida to lose eligibility in the first year alone despite their continued need for assistance and their attempts to find jobs. Over time, this policy been harmful to those who lose benefits yet does little to improve the employment outcomes of participants who are unable to comply. It also ignores the challenges that households of color face in the labor market, such as historical racism in the workplace, inability to control work schedules and assigned hours, and the lack of important benefits (e.g., sick leave) in many low wage jobs.
In Florida alone, participation in food stamps declined from 1.4 million people in January 1996 to just over 1 million in January 1998 after PRWORA took effect. Although a robust economy is partially responsible for the dwindling caseload, some of the racially motivated changes dictated by PRWORA contributed to the decline in participation, particularly for immigrants and people subject to PRWORA work requirements.