The U.S. Supreme Court has become the latest battleground in a legal fight over whether the Trump administration must fully fund the nation’s largest food assistance program during an ongoing government shutdown that has left tens of millions of Americans uncertain about their ability to buy groceries.
On October 24, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would suspend all November SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown, which began October 1. The announcement came despite the existence of $6 billion in congressionally appropriated contingency funds specifically reserved for such emergencies.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP or food stamps provides aid to approximately 42 million people—roughly one in eight Americans, including 16 million children, 8 million elderly individuals, and 1.2 million veterans.
On October 30, a coalition of plaintiffs—including the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, Service Employees International Union, cities such as Providence and Central Falls, nonprofit organizations, and a food retailer—filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. A separate lawsuit was simultaneously filed by 26 states in Massachusetts federal court.
On October 31, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to use the contingency funds to provide SNAP benefits. The judge gave the government two options: make full November payments by November 3 using available funds from the Child Nutrition account under Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, or make partial payments by November 5 using only the SNAP contingency funds.
The government chose the partial payment option, which would provide approximately 65% of maximum allotments—enough to cover roughly half of eligible households using the $4.65 billion available in contingency funds. However, the government said that implementing the unprecedented partial-payment system would require significant technical changes by states, taking “anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months” in some cases.
Finding that the government had failed to comply with his original order, Judge McConnell issued two new orders on November 6. The first was an enforcement order requiring full November SNAP payments. The second was a new temporary restraining order finding that the government’s decision to make only partial payments was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The district court determined the government acted unlawfully on four grounds: disregarding increased harm to beneficiaries forced to wait months for benefits; misapprehending its statutory authority to transfer funds; providing implausible reasoning about the risk of leaving child nutrition programs unfunded; and offering pretextual justifications given “numerous statements made in recent weeks by Trump administration officials who make clear that SNAP benefits are being withheld for political reasons.”
Both orders required the government to make full November SNAP payments by November 7 using funds from the Section 32 Child Nutrition account in combination with the SNAP contingency funds. The government had previously conceded during the October 31 hearing that it possessed legal authority to make such a transfer.
The Trump administration immediately appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting an emergency stay. On November 7, the appeals court denied the government’s request for an administrative stay, noting that the government would need to establish entitlement to a stay of both orders to receive the relief it sought.
Hours later, the government filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who oversees the First Circuit, granted a temporary administrative stay on Friday night, November 7, giving the appeals court time to rule on the stay pending appeal.
On Sunday, November 9, the First Circuit issued its full decision denying the government’s stay request. The three-judge panel concluded the government had failed to meet its burden under applicable stay factors, particularly regarding likelihood of success on the merits. The court noted that the government’s arguments focused almost entirely on the second temporary restraining order while largely ignoring the enforcement order, which independently required full payments.
In its emergency application to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the district court’s orders “make a mockery of the separation of powers” by forcing the executive branch to reallocate billions of dollars among competing programs without congressional authorization.
The government contends that its decision about whether to transfer $4 billion from Child Nutrition programs to cover SNAP is committed to agency discretion by law and therefore not subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act. The administration further argues that once funds are disbursed, “there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover” them.
In a supplemental brief filed Monday, November 10, the government noted that the Senate had begun the process of ending the shutdown with full SNAP funding through the end of the fiscal year, though the outcome remained uncertain. The brief argued that the district court’s orders “inject the federal courts into the political branches’ closing efforts to end this shutdown” and force the parties “to guess how emerging TROs might affect the parties’ willingness to agree to end the shutdown.”
On Monday night, November 10, the Senate passed the funding bill by the same 60-40 margin and sent it to the House of Representatives for consideration. House GOP leadership has indicated the chamber could vote as early as Wednesday, November 12.
The Supreme Court could act on the government’s request at any time, potentially issuing a decision that would determine the fate of full November SNAP payments for millions of Americans.
