The agency stopped defending its decision to hide retailers' SNAP profits more than a year ago. But with a Supreme Court case potentially on the horizon, new emails show it hasn't cut ties with industry on the issue.

Every year, the U.S. government spends nearly $70 billion on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. That’s a great thing for Americans who struggle with food insecurity. But the question remains: Who else benefits? Try to answer that question, and things get complicated quickly.

For years, journalists, anti-hunger advocates, and others have tried to determine which retailers receive the bulk of SNAP’s economic benefit. Details leak out in dribs and drabs—in 2013, for instance, Walmart confirmed it made $13 billion that year from SNAP after its vice president said as much at a private dinner party. Yet to this day, the public still hasn’t had a chance to see the full picture.

Since 2010, journalists at South Dakota’s Argus Leader have been fighting to obtain data that discloses the amount of money retailers like Walmart and Target receive via SNAP. The newspaper launched a lawsuit in 2011 after its Freedom of Information Act request was denied and the appeal went unanswered. A protracted legal standoff followed, a long and twisted saga which led to a three-judge panel on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately siding with the Leader. That most recent ruling has been referred to the Supreme Court—a development that leaves the case in legal limbo.