Supreme Court allows President Trump to pay part of SNAP benefits
Tens of millions of Americans are spending the weekend hungry as they await resolution to a political and legal battle over federal food aid.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is directing states to reverse steps they have taken to provide full food assistance benefits to low-income Americans or face financial penalties.
The new guidance, announced late Saturday, follows a U.S. Supreme Court order Friday that allowed the Trump administration to continue withholding $4 billion to cover all aid to about 42 million people, pending a lower court ruling.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as food stamps, are now in their 40th day, having expired at the beginning of the month for the first time in the program’s 60-year history due to the federal government shutdown.
Hours before the Supreme Court’s order, the USDA notified states in a memo that it was working to comply with a federal judge’s order to fully fund SNAP, even as the government appealed the ruling.
After receiving Friday’s memo, several states said they were beginning the process of issuing full benefits.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in guidance released Saturday that these national measures are currently not allowed due to the Supreme Court’s order. State governments should instead issue only partial benefits, the USDA said.
“Countries must immediately reverse the actions they took to issue full SNAP benefits in November 2025,” the memo states.
“Failure to comply with this memorandum may result in the Department of Agriculture taking a variety of actions, including rescinding federal funding for state administrative costs and holding states accountable for overissuance due to noncompliance,” the memo states.
Some states had previously said they would use state funds to pay for SNAP benefits in November. It was not immediately clear whether the memo applies to actions taken by those states. USDA did not respond to requests for comment.
Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey are among the states that announced Friday they are moving toward providing full benefits to SNAP recipients. No states immediately responded to inquiries about how they would respond to the memo.
legal battle
After announcing in October that SNAP benefits would expire on Nov. 1, states, cities and nonprofit organizations filed suit against President Donald Trump’s administration to demand full SNAP benefits.
Two federal judges ruled on October 31 that the government must use the agency’s roughly $5 billion emergency fund to cover at least some of the benefits. SNAP benefits cost approximately $8 billion to $9 billion per month.
The administration said it would comply with the order but warned that technical glitches could cause delays of weeks or months.
Cities and nonprofit groups represented by the liberal legal group Democracy Forward argued that the measures were inadequate and pressed Rhode Island’s U.S. District Judge John McConnell to order the government to provide full benefits.
On November 6, McConnell ordered the administration to fully fund SNAP for November by the next day, a decision that was immediately appealed by the Justice Department.
The Supreme Court’s Friday order gave the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals additional time to consider the government’s formal request to provide only a portion of the benefits.
As the legal battle unfolds, SNAP recipients are turning to already strained food stocks and making sacrifices, including withholding medicines, to shore up tight budgets.
(Reporting by Lee Douglas in Washington; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
