Hit a $4,500 Slot Jackpot? New Mexico Wants to Know if You’re on Food Stamps

Health officials in New Mexico are working with the state’s Gaming Control Board on a data-sharing agreement that will alert them when someone on food stamps hits big on a casino slot machine.

Source New Mexico reports the initiative is part of an effort to ensure that every penny spent on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) goes to those who need it, while reducing the state’s “SNAP error rate.”

New Mexico’s error rate – overpayments and underpayments to recipients – is 16%, the third highest in the country.

Failure to cut it to 6% by October 2027 could see the state on the hook for 15% of statewide SNAP benefits, or roughly $173 million, according to the New Mexico Health Care Authority (HCA).

Once the agreement is in place, winners of slot jackpots of $4,500 or more could become ineligible for food stamps.

The system would only apply to the state’s five racetrack casinos and several dozen small licensed nonprofit gaming halls, such as veterans’ and fraternal clubs that are permitted to operate slot machines.

It would not cover New Mexico’s 24 tribal casinos, which operate on sovereign tribal lands and are not licensed by the state Gaming Control Board.

Extending the system to those casinos would likely involve separate agreements with individual tribes and could require renegotiating tribal-state gaming compacts, something the tribes would have little incentive to support.

SNAP Decision

The 2014 federal Farm Bill first required SNAP households to lose eligibility “immediately upon receipt of winnings” after receiving a “substantial” lottery or gambling windfall, leaving the US Department of Agriculture to define what constituted “substantial.”

USDA, which oversees the SNAP program, codified the rule last August, setting the threshold at a single cash prize equal to or greater than SNAP’s elderly or disabled household resource limit, currently $4,500.

USDA estimates that, on average, about 27,500 SNAP households nationwide will receive substantial lottery or gambling winnings each year, equivalent to roughly 460 per state agency.

1 in 5 New Mexicans on Benefits

Currently, around 434,000 New Mexicans receive SNAP, according to HCA data – around 20% of the state’s population.

Sovereign Hager, public benefits director at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, criticized the new policy as an unnecessary burden on both SNAP recipients and state caseworkers.

Hager argued that modest, one-time gambling winnings often do little to lift families out of food insecurity before the money is spent and they must reapply for benefits.

The policy “may kick a family off for a month or two,” she told Source New Mexico. “Then they reapply. It’s burdensome for the agency, and there’s no data it makes a meaningful difference in solving hunger or food insecurity for families.”