Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

New Hampshire’s SNAP Work Notice Misstates Rules It Was Written to Explain

Federal rules spell out what this letter must tell the people who get it. The version dated Sept. 8, 2026 sets no deadline for the rules it applies to me, states its work exemption two ways, and clashes with a decision notice dated the same day.

Disclosure: I receive SNAP benefits through the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and am the person named in the letters examined here. Case numbers, my street address, household details and benefit figures are withheld.

The letter from the state’s Bureau of Family Assistance is addressed to me, in care of me, on a street whose name it misspells. The nine-page notice is dated Sept. 8, 2026, under the title “SNAP Consolidated Work Notice,” with the identifier WP0030. Page one puts my name under the general work requirements. Below that sits the heading for the time-limit rules on able-bodied adults without dependents, the rules that can end a person’s benefits after three months in a three-year period. It says those rules apply to “the following people.” Then it prints nothing.

A decision notice from the same bureau, dated the same day, tells its reader in an unconditional capitalized sentence to prove they meet the time-limit work requirements or lose benefits. Read together, the two letters leave a person unable to tell whether the time limit applies.

That is the first problem, not the biggest. Federal regulations tell New Hampshire what the work notice must contain. Several passages depart from that text in ways that misstate the rules, and most departures work against the reader, usually by dropping a protection. The full notice, with my case number and street address blacked out, is posted here.

The checklist the state was handed

At certification and recertification, the state must give each household a written notice and an oral explanation of every work requirement that applies, naming who is subject to which. The notice must explain exemptions, consequences and good cause, and give the dates by which a person must act to stay in compliance.

USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service restated that rule in an Oct. 3, 2025 memo to states implementing that July’s SNAP law, which extended the time limit to adults through age 64 and narrowed the child exception to adults responsible for a child under 14. It told states to update their notices.

New Hampshire’s notice gets those thresholds right, along with the statute’s exceptions for Indians, Urban Indians and California Indians. Its problems are elsewhere.

No deadlines, and no reasons

On the cover page and the three pages of general rules, the only calendar date is the letter’s own; a person who thinks an exemption applies is told to call “as soon as possible.” The notice can print a deadline when it has one: page five tells people under the time limit to report a drop below 80 monthly hours by the 10th of the following month. The general rules, the only ones it applies to me, carry no date and no statement that none exists.

It also never says why my name is on the list, or what “the Department’s decision” rests on. Federal rules and the department’s own Food Stamp Manual call for screening every person for every exemption; nothing in the nine pages says what that screening found. A person cannot rebut a finding the letter never shows.

A blank, then a warning in capitals

No name follows “the following people,” and neither do the words “no one.” Under the notice’s own exceptions, nobody in my household is subject to the time limit, so the blank is probably right in substance. It still has to say so, because the decision notice says “YOU MUST SHOW US YOU ARE MEETING THESE ABAWD WORK REQUIREMENTS” and points readers to a state form, “Are You an ABAWD?” A rule that can end benefits deserves one answer, printed once.

An exemption stated two ways

The federal exemption for working people turns on the word “or.” An employed or self-employed person working at least 30 hours a week, or earning at least the federal minimum wage times 30 hours, is exempt. At $7.25 an hour, that is $217.50 a week.

The notice copies that sentence, “or” included, then adds: “for this exemption you must be earning at least $217.50 weekly.” It repeats the sentence on page six, and the state form repeats it again. Read as written, the parenthetical makes earnings a requirement for everyone, canceling the hours test in the same sentence.

The department’s Food Stamp Manual draws a narrower line: it keeps the “or,” and requires only a person claiming self-employment for 18 consecutive months to show weekly net income of at least that amount in six of the last 12 months. The notice mentions neither the 18 months nor the six-month window. Granite State Report is a sole proprietorship, so I read that parenthetical twice; a self-employed reader cannot tell which test applies.

The federal rule carries two more protections the notice leaves out. Closing down your own business is not a voluntary quit. Neither is resigning because an employer demanded it.

A wage that is not a wage

The first requirement on page two ties the duty to accept work to a wage of “the Federal minimum wage multiplied by 30 hours,” or $217.50 a week. The federal requirement sets an hourly floor tied to the federal or state minimum wage; the 30-hour figure belongs to the exemption. The notice’s own sub-points, a few lines down, state the hourly test.

Penalties with the exits removed

The penalty section is the plainest writing in the letter and the least complete: one month without SNAP for a first violation without good cause, three months for a second, six for each after that.

Under the federal rule, those periods are minimums. A disqualification lasts until the later of that period or the date the person complies, and states may choose longer ones, up to permanent for a third or later violation. The rule also sets an order: the state must first decide whether good cause existed and, if it finds none, send a notice of adverse action within 10 days that describes how to avoid the penalty. The penalty begins only after that notice period, unless the person asks for a hearing. A person returns by reapplying and being found in compliance, or earlier by becoming exempt. The notice says none of this.

It also stretches the look-back, applying penalties to “any noncompliance” in the 30 days before someone applies. The federal look-back covers quitting or cutting hours without good cause, over a state-set window of 30 to 60 days.

Page one warns that benefits “may decrease or end” without saying which. Federal rules let a state disqualify a whole household when the penalized person heads it, for no longer than that person’s penalty or 180 days, whichever is shorter, and require each state to put its disqualification choices in a written plan. The letter does not say what New Hampshire chose.

Protections the notice leaves out

Three more departures run the same direction.

Start with commuting. The federal suitability test calls a job unsuitable if the distance is unreasonable given the wage and the time and cost of commuting, and it caps daily commuting at two hours without counting child-care trips. The notice keeps the two-hour cap and the walking-and-transportation rule but drops the wage-and-cost standard and the child-care carve-out.

Then reporting. The federal list tells a person to report to an employer the state refers them to, if the job is suitable. The notice’s list lacks that item and adds one the federal list lacks: report to DHHS if a potential job is unsuitable, with no word on how or by when.

Then good cause. The federal rule makes the state responsible for determining it, weighing what the person and the employer say, and describes it as including circumstances beyond the person’s control. The notice’s general good-cause section says penalties will not apply if the department finds good cause, but it never uses that phrase, presents good cause as the reader’s request by phone or mail, and never says the department must decide it before any penalty. Its list also omits a federal reason for leaving a job: accepting a bona fide offer of more than 30 hours a week that falls through for reasons beyond the person’s control.

Page six, on the time limit, does use the federal phrase, then says a person who missed work for good cause “could be considered” to have met the requirement if the absence is temporary “and you kept your job.” The federal rule says the person shall be considered to have met it when the absence is temporary, with no condition about keeping the job.

Email for appeals, phone or mail for the rest

The department’s 844 number appears nine times in nine pages. Exemption claims and good-cause requests go through that line, open weekdays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by mail to a Concord post office box. Changes can also be reported on the state’s NH EASY website, and hearing requests can go by email, with a request form online. The requests that keep a penalty from landing get neither option.

The two letters even give different addresses for a written hearing request. The notice lists a district office or the Administrative Appeals Unit at 105 Pleasant Street in Concord; the decision notice says the post office box at the top of its first page.

The same mistakes, in three documents

The notice spells its mail unit “Scnning” on page three and “Scanning” on page four, prints “emplo yment” with a gap, and puts a double comma in page six’s office hours. It defines an able-bodied adult as any person “aged 18 but is younger than age 65,” which, read literally, describes only 18-year-olds, and the decision notice and the state form repeat that construction. The decision notice also calls the program the “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program” and says laws changed it “On October 1,” in the past tense, in a letter dated Sept. 8.

The Spanish text on page one tells readers to call “la Oficina del Distrito” with questions and says free interpreter services are available on request, but no number on that page is labeled as a district office’s.

Three documents, three answers on legal help

Even the pointer to a lawyer changes by document. The work notice says to call 211. The decision notice names NH Legal Aid, with a web address and toll-free number. The rights form it calls enclosed, BFA Form 810, is dated 10/19, calls the benefit “Food Stamps,” a federal name retired in 2008, and sends readers to their telephone directory for the nearest New Hampshire Legal Assistance office.

What is not the state’s fault

Some of the clunkiest wording comes from Washington, including “handicap” among the discrimination grounds and “weekly wages” in the working exemption. The government’s electronic code still prints the time-limit regulation, 7 CFR 273.24, with exceptions Congress rewrote in 2025, so on those thresholds New Hampshire’s letter is ahead of the regulation. Its job-offer wording skips the state minimum wage, which matches the federal $7.25 anyway.

The paperwork gets real things right, too: page eight explains how to keep benefits during an appeal, and the decision notice’s benefit arithmetic is internally consistent. The errors sit where the notice departs from the federal text.

If this letter came to you

• Keep every page, and read any same-day decision notice beside it.
• If an exemption fits, put it in writing to the BFA Central Scanning Unit, P.O. Box 181, Concord, NH 03302, and call 1-844-275-3447. Keep a copy, and note who you spoke with and when.
• Self-employed and working 30 or more hours a week? The federal exemption, 7 CFR 273.7(b)(1)(vii), reads hours or earnings; the department’s manual adds an earnings condition after 18 consecutive months. Ask in writing which test applies to you.
• If the time-limit list on page one is blank and you are between 18 and 64, ask DHHS in writing whether the three-month limit applies to you, and why.
• For the time limit, federal rules count unpaid work, verified under the state’s standards, as work toward the 80 hours a month.
• A fair hearing can cover whether you are exempt. Requests can go through a district office, the Administrative Appeals Unit at 105 Pleasant Street in Concord, (603) 271-4292, or dhhs.aau@dhhs.nh.gov. To keep benefits while appealing a cut, the notice says to ask within 15 days of the Notice of Decision date, and warns those benefits may have to be repaid if you lose.
• New Hampshire Legal Assistance, a nonprofit law firm, provides free civil legal aid, including on public benefits, at 1-800-639-5290.

This is general information, not legal advice. For advice about your own case, talk to a lawyer.

What DHHS owes the next person who opens this letter

The fixes are not hard. List any deadlines, or say there are none. Say what the department relied on. Write “no one” where no one is covered, and aim the capitalized time-limit warning only at people the work notice lists. Keep the federal “or,” and state any self-employment earnings test plainly. Print the penalty rule whole. Add the commuting and good-cause standards. Take exemption claims the way the department takes appeals. Retire the 10/19 rights form. Spell the mail unit’s name.

This letter explains a condition of buying groceries. The department that mails it can at least get the condition right.

— Dexter Dow, Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Every factual claim above was checked against the sources listed and the fact-check table. Quotations from the documents are exact, including spelling and capitalization. Case numbers, the author’s street address, household members, coverage identifiers and benefit figures are withheld from the text and images; the posted copy of the work notice is redacted only for the case number and street address. Any response DHHS sends to granitestatereport@gmail.com will be published in full. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors at the top of the article, stating what the article said, what is true, what changed, and when, and posts the correction on the channels that carried the original.