Rule challenge restores millions in food stamps, mostly to the elderly and disabled.

Thomas Mayer, 86, lives alone in a two-bedroom, tin-roofed house in the woods of rural Calhoun County where his only companion is a 2-year-old Labrador mix named Boy.

Mayer, not his real name, does his own plumbing, air conditioning, electrical work, and auto repair, enabling him to live on just $911 a month in Social Security. He hasn't even seen a doctor in 10 years, preferring to use natural remedies.

But when the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) notified him that he was no longer eligible to receive $ 16 a month in food stamps, he finally came up against a problem he couldn't solve on his own.

Mayer, a retired Volkswagen engineer who spent his pension on his ex-wife's medical care when she developed ovarian cancer decades ago, uses the Internet daily to scout for bargains and troubleshoot, so that's where he turned in search of a lawyer.

He came across the Florida Senior Legal Helpline run by Bay Area Legal Services in Tampa, which is funded primarily by the Florida Department of Elder Affairs and through a $21,590 grant from The Florida Bar Foundation.

"The Helpline is analogous to triage in the medical sense, where people call with what they think is a civil legal problem, and it's our job to listen to their problem, basically spot the issue, and then give them legal advice," said Ellen Cheek, the Senior Legal Helpline attorney who fielded Mayer's call.

In a form letter, DCF had told Mayer his income was too high, but it hadn't changed, and he'd been receiving food stamps for 20 years under a federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) minimum allotment policy governing small households.

"He was offended because the reason they'd given him for terminating him after all these years was so vague, he couldn't possibly challenge it," Cheek said.

She agreed with Mayer that something wasn't right. She had seen other cases where she suspected the state had misinterpreted a federal rule governing public benefits, and in such cases she always turned to the experts at another Florida Bar Foundation grantee, Florida Legal Services, for advice.

"Their job is to provide that support and that technical assistance," Cheek said. "They told me that if I could get it referred to the local legal services program, Legal Services of North Florida, then Florida Legal Services would be the technical assistance and support. And that's what happened."

The result was better than Mayer could have imagined.

Working together, the...