Louisiana food stamp households have been living under a purchase limit since mid-February. Soft drinks, energy drinks and candy are off the list of foods SNAP benefits can buy in the state. The limit applies at the register, so an EBT card that worked for those items last year no longer does.
The rule comes from a federal waiver that changed the definition of eligible food for Louisiana only. It sits among 23 state waivers on the USDA’s list, and not every state’s waiver has the same status.
The question for a Louisiana household is what its EBT card can still buy. The waiver names three barred categories and leaves the rest of the SNAP-eligible grocery list in place.
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February 18 is the date the limit began
USDA’s Louisiana waiver page says the approval changes the definition of food eligible for purchase with SNAP to exclude soft drinks, energy drinks and candy. The summary table lists the same February 18, 2026 implementation date.
The date moved once. The page’s status updates say USDA approved a request on December 12, 2025 to shift implementation from January 1, 2026 to February 18, 2026, so the limit has been in force since mid-February.
The page says the approval is for two years, which carries the waiver into early 2028. The state reports to USDA each quarter, and the agency says it will evaluate the project from those reports.
The three barred categories
The waiver is specific about what it removes. Soft drinks, energy drinks and candy are the three categories on USDA’s Louisiana page, and the summary table repeats them in the same words.
The page does not define “soft drinks” or “candy” in its own text, and it refers to separate terms and conditions for the detail. That means the edges, such as how a particular beverage or a candy-adjacent snack is classified, are settled by the state and the retailer notices rather than by the page itself.
The waiver does not touch the rest of the benefit. Groceries outside the three categories remain eligible, and the monthly amount a household receives is unchanged by it.
Louisiana’s waiver stands while four states’ did not
USDA’s food restriction waiver table shows what separates Louisiana from Colorado, Iowa, Tennessee and West Virginia. Those four rows carry a court entry saying that on June 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in Aragon et al. v. Rollins et al., ordered USDA’s approval of each waiver vacated and said implementation may not proceed.
Louisiana has no such entry. Its row lists a target implementation date of February 18, 2026 and a request to restrict soft drinks, energy drinks and candy, and the state page was last updated on September 18, 2026.
The table is updated by USDA, and it was last revised on October 13, 2026. A household in any state on the list can read its own row to see whether a date or a court entry applies.
Neighboring Texas runs a similar limit on a different start date. USDA’s Texas page lists sweetened drinks and candy as restricted from April 1, 2026, so a household that shops on both sides of the state line meets two lists with different wording and different start dates.
What happens at the register
A restricted item rings up as ineligible for EBT. A shopper can pay for it with cash or another card, and the rest of the grocery order can still go on the benefit card.
Retailers got their own notice about the waiver, which USDA links from the table along with contact emails for recipients and retailers. A shopper who believes an item was wrongly blocked can start with the state agency named on the USDA page, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.
The restriction does not change when a household recertifies or reports changes. Those deadlines run on the same calendar they did before February, which matters for anyone whose renewal is coming up this winter.
What can a Louisiana EBT card still buy now that soft drinks and candy are barred?
A purchase limit changes what the card buys, but a missed renewal or an unreported change ends the benefit itself. Louisiana households have had the new limit since February 18 and still have recertification and reporting dates to keep.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer walks through SNAP recertification and Medicaid renewal and shows the senior rules that raise the benefit. It includes 51 state packs and a renewal and reporting calendar, so each state’s rules sit beside the dates that keep the benefit going.
Get the renewal organizer with 51 state packs and the reporting calendar →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
