Trump Administration Must Pay Food Stamp Program: Appeals Court

The Trump administration cannot withhold money from the federal food stamp program, known as SNAP, an appeals court ruled late Nov. 9.

The government is not likely to succeed in its appeal of an order that required the government to fully fund SNAP amid the government shutdown, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said.

“We do not take lightly the government’s concern that money used to fund November SNAP payments will be unavailable for other important nutrition assistance programs,” U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman wrote for the panel.

“But we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in determining that the overwhelming evidence of widespread harm that a stay would cause right now, by leaving tens of millions of Americans without food as winter approaches, outweighed the potential monetary harm to the government and [the other nutrition programs], months into the future.”

The ruling upholds an order from a district judge, who ruled on Nov. 6 that the government failed to comply with an earlier order that mandated quick partial SNAP payments for November or full funding of the program for the month.

The new ruling, however, does not immediately require the government to fund SNAP. That’s because later Friday, after the First Circuit declined to stay the district judge’s order, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson entered an administrative stay of the district court order.

Jackson said the stay would be in place until the appeals court issued a ruling explaining why it was not blocking the order.

“This administrative stay will terminate forty-eight hours after the First Circuit’s resolution of the pending motion, which the First Circuit is expected to issue with dispatch,” she wrote at the time.

SNAP serves about 42 million Americans. The average participant receives about $187.20 per month on an electronic card, which can be used at grocery stores to buy produce and other items.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the program with states, had said it would not fund SNAP at all starting in November due to the shutdown. The district judge initially ordered the government to choose between using money from its contingency fund to partially pay November benefits or fully funding the program with contingency money in combination with funds earned from tariffs.

Officials chose the former but did not meet the deadline included in the order for getting the money to beneficiaries, the judge said on Friday. He said the government had lost its ability to choose and must fully fund the program.

The department on Saturday told states to undo steps taken to disperse full benefits. The Senate, meanwhile, advanced a bill that would end the shutdown if it is approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.