SNAP: Trump admin gets longer Supreme Court pause on order it pay full food stamp benefits

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended until late Thursday night a pause in a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration pay full SNAP benefits for November.

The two-day delay, which was objected to by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, gives Congress time to pass a short-term funding bill that would reopen the U.S. government, which has been shut down since Oct. 1, and fund the SNAP program that provides 42 million Americans with food stamps.

The Trump administration had argued in a filing Monday with the Supreme Court that the tangled legal dispute over the benefits could soon be rendered moot by Congress passing that bill this week.

If the bill is approved, and SNAP benefits start flowing as normal, that would remove the justification for lawsuits demanding that they continue during the shutdown.

The House of Representatives is expected to start voting on the Senate-approved bill on Wednesday afternoon, and President Donald Trump has indicated he would sign that bill.

U.S. District Court for Rhode Island Judge Jack McConnell last Thursday ordered the administration to pay the full SNAP benefits, rejecting the administration’s plan to pay just 65% of that aid. The administration originally planned to not pay any benefits during November despite $4.6 billion being available for that purpose from a contingency fund.

McConnell directed federal officials to use not only the contingency fund, but also to use about $4 billion in funds from the Children’s Nutrition Program to help pay for the full benefits, which the administration had refused to do.

A federal appeals court in Boston upheld McConnell’s order, but a short-term stay imposed by Justice Jackson blocked the order. That stay was due to expire on Tuesday night.

In its order on Tuesday extending the stay by two days, the Supreme Court said that the administration’s application for a longer-term stay of the order pending an appeal had been referred to the full court for consideration.

The court said that the stay will remain in effect until 11:59 p.m. ET Thursday.

Tuesday’s order by the court noted that Jackson had said that she would “deny the request for extension of the administrative stay and would deny the application.” There was no written dissent by Jackson explaining her objection.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose state had sued the administration in another case to compel full SNAP benefits payments during the shutdown, in a statement said, “This decision means millions of Americans will once again be left wondering how they will feed their families.”

“We hope to see an end to this suffering soon, as the government reopens and SNAP is once again fully funded. In the meantime, any New Yorkers who have received their November SNAP benefits should not be afraid to use them.”