Nov. 11 (UPI) — Federal food benefits will remain on hold after the Supreme Court on Tuesday kept an order in place withholding SNAP payments as the government shutdown appears close to ending.
The court’s order caps a flurry of legal jousting over the Trump administration’s directive to states to halt distributing food assistance to 42 million Americans while Congress remained at an impasse over funding.
The order comes a day after the Senate approved a bill to end the shutdown, which has lasted longer than 40 days, and is expected to be quickly voted on by the House. At just three sentences long, the order does not explain the court’s reasoning but effectively keeps the freeze on SNAP benefits through Thursday.
“This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court means millions of Americans will once again be left wondering how they will feed their families,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a post on X. “We hope to see an end to this suffering soon, as the government reopens and SNAP is once again fully funded.”
The Trump administration signaled in October that it would not tap a contingency fund to pay SNAP benefits while the government remained shut down. Previous administrations had used the fund to keep benefits flowing during shut downs, and the move created a chaotic situation for people who rely on the program as well as state governments.
A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to pay full benefits for the month of November. That order was later appealed to the Supreme Court where Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the lower court’s ruling to pay the full benefits to give an appeals court time for a final resolution. The Supreme Court justices have the authority to issue temporary “stays” to lower courts while cases are being appealed.
However, in her most recent order Jackson indicated that she was the only one of the nine justices willing to let the lower court’s ruling take effect immediately.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the Supreme Court’s decision, writing in a post on X that it would “prevent further judicial upheaval for the SNAP and Child Nutrition programs.”
“Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress to end the shutdown WITHOUT last-ditch disruption from lower courts,” she wrote.