Court blocks Trump admin bid to limit SNAP food aid payments temporarily

By Peter Blumberg

 

A US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s order requiring the Trump administration to fully fund November food-aid benefits to 42 million eligible Americans.

 

A panel of the US 1st Circuit Court of Appeals late Sunday denied the administration’s request to continue making only partial payments during the government shutdown, while it challenges a lower court judge’s directive to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, or SNAP, at 100 per cent.

 

The Department of Agriculture and other US agencies have argued that the government doesn’t have enough money to cover the entire cost of SNAP benefits for November amid a federal funding lapse.

 

“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,” Judge Julie Rikelman wrote in the court’s order late Sunday. “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.”

 

Signs of a potential resolution to the record-breaking government shutdown emerged over the weekend as a group of moderate Senate Democrats broke with their party leaders to support a deal. The fight over paying SNAP benefits has emerged as a major flash point in the weeks-long standoff.

 

US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island on Thursday ordered the administration to tap alternative reserve funds to send states the $8.5 billion to $9 billion needed this month for SNAP as the budget impasse in Congress drags on.

 

The judge said that President Donald Trump’s administration must make all of the funds available to states, finding that the government had failed to comply with his earlier order and that people will go hungry if the funds are not made available.

 

The administration had committed Tuesday to covering 65 per cent of benefits this month after losing an earlier round in court, while warning that the recalculation process was likely to cause weeks or even months of delays. Previously, the administration had pledged to cover only 50 per cent of the payments.

 

“This is a crisis, to be sure, but it is a crisis occasioned by congressional failure, and that can only be solved by congressional action,” the government said in its emergency request for the appeals court to stay McConnell’s order.

 

The Rhode Island State Council of Churches and other groups that filed the lawsuit argued in response that the government was incorrectly claiming that tapping funds from child nutrition programs would put those programs at risk.

 

On the appeals court, Rikelman was appointed by former President Joe Biden, as was a second judge on the panel, Gustavo Gelpi. The third panelist, Chief Judge David Barron, was appointed by Barack Obama.

 

Sunday’s ruling comes after the Trump administration persuaded a US Supreme Court justice Friday to pause McConnell’s order requiring full SNAP funding by that night.

 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sent the case back to the 1st Circuit, ordering that a ruling by the appeals court remain on hold for 48 hours. That would give the administration a chance to return to the Supreme Court.