Supreme Court Extends Pause on November SNAP Payments

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended a pause on a federal court order requiring the Trump administration to issue full funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in November.

The justices eschewed a definitive ruling just days before the longest shutdown in U.S. history is expected to end, which would effectively resolve the case in question. Reopening the government would restart the program, though it remains unclear how quickly states would receive payments to cover this month’s SNAP benefits.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson objected to her colleagues’ decision and wrote in the court’s order that she would have denied an application for the case altogether, which would effectively uphold the lower court’s rulings. Neither side explained their reasoning.

Last Friday, the U.S. solicitor general asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to prevent the Department of Agriculture from transferring “an estimated $4 billion” in SNAP funds to comply with a district court ruling.

The decision leaves in place the chaotic status quo for millions of Americans who rely on the benefits program to buy food, after three weeks of tumultuous back-and-forth between the Trump administration and the courts.

U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered the Trump administration last Thursday to fully pay November SNAP benefits within 24 hours, after finding that the administration had “arbitrarily and capriciously” failed to comply with his previous order asking it to tap into contingency funding to partially fund November SNAP benefits.

The Trump administration had previously said in a filing that it would tap into contingency funds to comply with McConnell’s first order, but within hours of the Thursday hearing requested by a group of cities and nonprofits, the Justice Department asked the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in an emergency stay request to stop McConnell’s ruling.

The court of appeals denied the administration’s request, and Justice Jackson ordered that the parties involved would have until 11:00 a.m. Tuesday to submit additional information to consider whether the pause was granted or not.

The SNAP program, which serves 42 million Americans, ran out of federal funding for the first time in history on Nov. 1 due to the government shutdown, leaving states scrambling to figure out how to assist recipients.