Supreme Court allows Trump administration to temporarily withhold some SNAP payments for November

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday at least temporarily allowed the Trump administration to withhold about $4 billion in payments for the SNAP food benefits program that a federal judge had ordered.

The court, via an order issued by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, provisionally blocked an order issued by Rhode Island-based U.S. District Judge John McConnell that required the payments to be made by Friday night.

The administration has said that because of the government shutdown, there is only enough money to pay partial benefits this month. It had previously agreed to pay about $5 billion from a SNAP contingency fund but objected to paying another $4 billion from a separate program, arguing McConnell had no authority to force it to.

Earlier on Friday, the Agriculture Department had indicated it would make the full payments, according to a memo obtained by NBC News. Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary of the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, informed states that the USDA “will complete the processes necessary” to fully issue SNAP benefits for the time being.

McConnell on Thursday afternoon ordered the administration to deliver full payments to states by Friday, chastising it for delays that he said have likely caused SNAP recipients to go hungry.

The Trump administration unsuccessfully asked the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately block McConnell’s order while that court considers the case in more detail. The administration then turned to the Supreme Court.

In her order, Jackson said a temporary stay was required so that the appeals court can consider the government’s application in full. Jackson is the justice responsible for appeals from the Boston-based appeals court.

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That court had said in an earlier order that it intends to act “as quickly as possible.”

Nearly 42 million people rely on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X Friday: “The Supreme Court just granted our administrative stay in this case. Our attorneys will not stop fighting, day and night, to defend and advance President Trump’s agenda.”

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The administration agreed earlier this week to use $4.65 billion in contingency funds to cover about 65% of the benefits that eligible households would ordinarily receive. But it argued that it cannot draw from additional funds set aside for child nutrition programs, known as Section 32 funding, to fully fund SNAP because doing so would take away resources from other programs, like school lunches.

“Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds — to the significant detriment of those other critical social programs whose budgets the district court ordered the government to raid,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the Supreme Court filing.

The back-and-forth over SNAP funding has persisted for weeks. First, the administration said the funding would not be distributed in November as long as the federal government remained closed. However, the progressive legal advocacy group Democracy Forward challenged that plan in a lawsuit, prompting McConnell last week to order the Trump administration to distribute benefits as soon as possible.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said earlier this week that the partial payments were disbursed to states. Since states oversee the process of loading payments onto electronic benefits cards, the Trump administration has argued that it has done its part by authorizing SNAP funding and giving states information to calculate partial benefits for households.

However, McConnell said Thursday that the administration’s actions did not comply with his order to deliver the payments expeditiously and efficiently.

“People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable,” McConnell said, adding: “This should never happen in America.”

This is the first time SNAP benefits have lapsed because of a government shutdown in the program’s 61-year history. Some families whose EBT cards were due to be reloaded already this week have reported skipping meals or subsisting on the meager foods remaining in their pantries, such as cereal or ramen.

We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the government shutdown, whether you’re a federal employee who can’t work right now, a person who relies on federal benefits like SNAP, or someone who is feeling the effects of other shuttered services in your everyday life. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.