The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states already have received the funds.
A judge had given the Republican administration until Friday to make the payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But the administration asked an appeals court to suspend any court orders requiring it to spend more money than is available in a contingency fund, and instead allow it to continue with planned partial SNAP payments for the month.
After a Boston appeals court declined to immediately intervene, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an order late Friday pausing the requirement to distribute full SNAP payments until the appeals court rules on whether to issue a more lasting pause. Jackson handles emergency matters from Massachusetts.
Her order will remain in place until 48 hours after the appeals court rules, giving the administration time to return to the Supreme Court if the appeals court refuses to step in.
The food program serves about 1 in 8 Americans, mostly with lower incomes.
Officials in more than a half-dozen states confirmed that some SNAP recipients already were issued full November payments on Friday. But Jackson’s order could prevent other states from initiating the payments.
Which states issued SNAP payments
In Wisconsin, more than $104 million of monthly food benefits became available at midnight on electronic cards for about 337,000 households, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said. The state was able to access the federal money so quickly by submitting a request to its electronic benefit card vendor to process the SNAP payments within hours of a Thursday court order to provide full benefits.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said state employees “worked through the night” to issue full November benefits “to make sure every Oregon family relying on SNAP could buy groceries” by Friday.
Hawaii had the information for November’s monthly payments ready to go, so it could submit it quickly for processing after Thursday’s court order — and before a higher court could potentially pause it, Joseph Campos II, deputy director of Hawaii’s Department of Human Services, told The Associated Press.
“We moved with haste once we verified everything,” Campos said.
Trump’s administration told the Supreme Court that the fast-acting states were “trying to seize what they could of the agency’s finite set of remaining funds, before any appeal could even be filed, and to the detriment of other States’ allotments.”
“Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing.
Officials in California, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington state also said they moved quickly to issue full SNAP benefits Friday, while other states said they expected full benefits to arrive over the weekend or early next week. Still others said they were waiting for further federal guidance.
