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Can you not argue that the average is the same and thus the law isn’t violated?

No, because the law applies to individual transactions, not averages.

Does the law say the average price must be the same, or does it say the price must be the same?

Reality: the supermarket does it the common sense way, and never gets sued, but if they do get sued, the outcome is "you must now refund 2 cents from every SNAP transaction you ever did"

Very unlikely that would happen. The way similar issues have been dealt with in the past is that settlement is negotiated to something "reasonable" (at least arguably so) and administrable. Probably the settlement amount would just go to a fund that the state would then distribute according to its priorities.

It's probably the case that the real risk is being suspended from SNAP for failing to comply with their rules.

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