U.S. Supreme Court docket Police stand behind safety limitations in entrance of the Court docket constructing, which is obscured in building scaffolding, on the primary day of the Court docket’s new time period on October 06, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Photographs
A federal appeals courtroom in Boston, for a second time, late Sunday flatly rejected a request by the Trump administration to dam a decrease courtroom choose’s order that it pay 42 million Individuals their full SNAP advantages throughout the federal government shutdown.
However the choose’s order stays paused on account of a previous Supreme Court docket ruling till a minimum of Tuesday night time.
That offers the administration time to return to the Supreme Court docket and ask for a everlasting keep of the order pending its attraction of the case.
The ruling Sunday by a three-judge panel of the first Circuit Court docket of Appeals got here a day after the U.S. Division of Agriculture threatened states which have issued full advantages since Friday with monetary penalties if they don’t “undo” these funds.
And it got here hours after the Senate narrowly handed step one of a bipartisan deal that may reopen the federal government inside days, and absolutely fund the Supplemental Diet Help Program by way of subsequent September.
“In reviewing the district courtroom’s balancing of the equities, we additionally can not ignore the actual occasions previous this litigation,” wrote Circuit Court docket Decide Julie Rikelman within the panel’s choice Sunday. “Because the district courtroom discovered, ‘it is a drawback that might have been prevented.'”
“The file right here exhibits that the federal government sat on its arms for almost a month, unprepared to make partial funds, whereas individuals who depend on SNAP acquired no advantages every week into November and counting,” Rikelman wrote.
“In gentle of those distinctive details, we can not conclude that the district courtroom abused its discretion in requiring full cost of November SNAP advantages to effectuate the October 31 [temporary restraining order after the government had failed to comply with it.”
The Trump administration on Oct. 24 broke decades of precedent when it said it would not pay SNAP benefits in November because Congress had not appropriated money for the program, or any other government program, past the date the shutdown began, Oct. 1. Past administrations had paid SNAP benefits in full during other shutdowns.
The administration rejected the idea of the remaining $4.6 billion in a contingency fund that Congress had specifically allocated to backstop SNAP.
A group of plaintiffs, comprised of nonprofits, local governments, a union, and a food retailer, sued the administration in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island seeking a judicial order forcing the administration to use the contingency fund and other pools of money to fully fund SNAP benefits.
Judge Jack McConnell, who is overseeing the case, ordered the administration to make at least partial benefits as soon as possible by tapping the contingency fund, and to investigate if other money could be used.
McConnell on Thursday ordered that the administration pay full benefits, days after the administration told him it would pay only partial benefits — but that it would take some time to do so — and told him that it had ruled out using so-called Section 32 funds.
McConnell ordered that the administration use Section 32 funds to make up the difference between the 65% of benefits the administration planned to pay by using the contingency fund and the full value of the benefits. SNAP benefits cost about $8 billion each month.
The administration then asked the 1st Circuit for a temporary stay of McConnell’s order on an emergency basis, which the appeals court rejected on Friday.
But the appeals court at the same time also said it was still considering the “government’s motion for a stay pending appeal [of McConnell’s order] … and we intend to concern a call on that movement as rapidly as potential.”
On Friday night time, Supreme Court docket Ketanji Brown Jackson, appearing on a request by the administration, paused McConnell’s order from taking impact and informed the first Circuit to rapidly rule on the request for the keep pending attraction.
Jackson’s order paused for 48 hours any ruling by the first Circuit from taking impact.
