Altimont Mark Wilks, of Hagerstown, admits that his “entrepreneurial spirit” got him involved in drug trafficking and crime in the first place.
In 2004, he was imprisoned for firearm and drug offenses: He served 14 years.
“While in prison, I took my time to re-educate myself, and to really just become a better person,” said Wilks. In 2018, he re-entered society, took a job delivering packages for Fed-Ex, borrowed start-up money from family, and a year later began Carmen’s Corner Store in Hagerstown. The store is named after his mother, a Jamaican immigrant. In 2022, he opened a second store in Frederick.
At both stores he applied to accept payments as a vendor through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. Both times his application was denied — permanently. The USDA bans vendors with federal, state or local violations related to “alcohol, tobacco, firearms, controlled substances, or gaming licenses.”
On Tuesday, he filed suit in Baltimore against the United States Department of Agriculture, the department that oversees SNAP.
“I'm being discriminated against, because I made bad choices in life. But I served my time. Those bad choices and my transgressions of the law should not still be used against me,” Wilks told WYPR earlier this week. “It feels like double jeopardy.”
Wilks’ lawyer, Jared McClain with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, argued that the USDA is interpreting their regulation too narrowly. In the complaint, he argues that when the regulation was created in 2008, it was intended to target vendors who had licensing or consumer protection complaints against them related to alcohol, tobacco, firearms, controlled substances, or gaming licenses– not all offenses.
“Say you got a ‘drunk in public’ in college… that means you never have business integrity for the rest of your life and can never participate in SNAP,” said McClain.
The USDA did not respond to WYPR’s request for comment before this story aired.
Wilks has a history of activism on this and similar issues — in 2020 he sued the federal government when he was denied a Payroll Protection Program loan from the Small Business Administration because of his criminal record. McClain also represented Wilks in that case. While that litigation was pending, the SBA relaxed the rule. Wilks is also working with Congressman David Trone, a Democrat from the 6th district who is running to replace Senator Ben Cardin, to pass the SNAP Second Chance Act. That bill would limit the USDA’s ability to deny retailers with past criminal convictions of the ability to accept SNAP payments.
