A Colorado store has ten days to answer the USDA.
In Colorado, SNAP benefits are issued by the Department of Human Services - but the letter threatening your authorization isn’t a state letter. It comes from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, and it gives you ten days from receipt under 7 CFR 278.6(b)(1). Denver’s neighborhood markets and the mountain and Eastern Plains stores couldn’t be less alike, and ALERT compares them anyway. We defend Colorado retailers on that clock, from anywhere in the country, and the first conversation costs nothing.
We owe loyalty to only you.
When you’re looking online, you have multiple options. There are so many firms advertising SNAP defense. Thankfully, your search is over. Spodek Law Group P.C. offers premier white-glove service and we’re unafraid of fighting. Unlike firms that are more focused on their relationship with the agency than with you, we owe loyalty to only YOU. Your store, your family, your license.
One reason our firm has such a high success rate is that we’re selective about who we work with. If we’re choosing to work with you, it’s because we think we can make a positive impact. That’s vastly different from firms that take on any client willing to pay. When you reach out, you start with a risk-free consultation - and you can ask us anything you want, regardless of how long it takes.
If there’s a way to keep your store in the program, we’ll find it. That’s the whole job.
Six things Colorado owners need straight before they answer.
Ten days, Colorado or anywhere else. Same discipline.
There’s no hearing and no oral argument in this stage. Whatever is filed inside the ten days is the whole case for the store, so it gets built in a fixed order.
Have your letter read todayFour documents, already inside your Colorado store.
USDA FNS MOUNTAIN PLAINS
SNAP
UPDATED 2026
SNAP violation defense in Colorado: who decides, what they see, and what to file
Whatever the envelope looks like, the charge is federal. In Colorado the Department of Human Services runs SNAP for households, but retailer sanctions belong to USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, whose Mountain Plains Region operates out of Denver. That distinction matters on day one, because owners lose time calling the wrong agency. The deadline is ten days from receipt under 7 CFR 278.6(b)(1), and it isn’t negotiable.
Denver’s neighborhood markets and the mountain and Eastern Plains stores couldn’t be less alike, and ALERT compares them anyway. Mountain and plains groceries produce redemption patterns that have nothing in common with the stores ALERT chooses as peers. ALERT, the agency’s transaction-monitoring system, generates most of these charges. That comparison is assumed, not verified, and it’s the most attackable part of the case.
Where trafficking is charged, permanent disqualification is the prescribed sanction under 278.6(e)(1). The regulation reaches conduct by personnel of the firm, so a clerk’s act is attributed to the store and the owner’s knowledge isn’t a defense to the finding. A civil money penalty in lieu is the way out, and it has to be requested in writing within those ten days. Silence on that point triggers 278.6(b)(2)(iii), and the penalty is gone permanently.
What actually moves a Colorado case is documentary. Invoices, itemized register data and inventory counts are what answer it. Where the charge is a pattern of ineligible items rather than trafficking, the sanction is a term on the ladder at 7 CFR 278.6(e) - six months to five years - and proportion, itemized baskets and a documented compliance program are what pull it down a rung.
A determination isn’t the end: administrative review under 7 CFR 279 allows new evidence in. A federal action under 7 U.S.C. 2023 follows within thirty days, tried de novo. For Colorado retailers that means the District of Colorado, and it means the review record you build now is the record a judge reads later.
If a charge letter is sitting on the counter of your Colorado store, the ten days are already running. Call today, read us the first line, and bring the attachment - we’ll tell you what day you’re on and what can still be filed.
When the biggest cases break, we get the call. That same team answers your ten days.
When the networks need a federal file explained in plain English, they call us.
This bench answers its own phone. Put it on your case.
Tell us what happened. Eight fields, two minutes - and a lawyer reads it today.
Read us the first line of the letter. We’ll tell you what day you’re on.
Bring the envelope, the attachment, and your invoices if you have them. If you don’t have them, bring the letter. The consultation is risk-free, it stays between us, and it happens today - ask us anything, regardless of how long it takes.