First Circuit rejects Trump’s effort to cut off SNAP benefits as Senate looks to reopen government

(CN) — A federal appeals court has sided with a group of Rhode Island churches and nonprofits in ruling that the Trump administration can be forced to pay full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history looks poised to end.

In a 29-page opinion issued late Sunday night, a trio of First Circuit judges declined the administration’s request to stay an order from a lower court that demanded they pay the SNAP benefits in full.

“Without SNAP, tens of millions would go hungry — the first among a cascade of other health and financial harms that would befall those forced to go without enough food, particularly in the months leading up to winter,” the judges wrote, acknowledging that some families may have to choose between paying for heating or paying for food during the cold months ahead.

“These immediate, predictable and unchallenged harms facing forty-two million Americans who rely on SNAP benefits — including fourteen million children — weigh heavily against a stay,” the judges added.

Children and seniors make up nearly 60% of all SNAP recipients. More than 1 million recipients are veterans.

In days, several cases around SNAP benefit funding could become moot. The government appears close to restarting the government, with the Senate voting Sunday on legislation that could reopen and continue to fund similar federal programs.

The opinion was penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman, a Joe Biden appointee, who was joined by fellow Biden-appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Gustavo Gelpí and U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, a Barack Obama appointee.

Calling SNAP “a vital bulwark against hunger and food insecurity,” the judges found that the Trump administration ultimately failed to prove why the lower court’s order should be stayed. They noted that the Department of Agriculture didn’t take its usual steps to address lapses in SNAP funding before attempting to cut the benefits off altogether, but rather “sat on its hands for nearly a month” as it prepared to pull the rug out from under SNAP recipients.

“According to the record here, USDA did not take any steps to prepare to make partial payments either before or after the shutdown,” the judges wrote. “Instead, it only acted after it was ordered to do so by the district court on October 31, during this litigation.”

The First Circuit’s ruling is on hold due to an earlier ruling from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who last week allowed the administration a brief stay on issuing full SNAP benefits.

Following Sunday’s ruling, Jackson set a briefing schedule to hear the case before the Supreme Court. The government’s supplemental brief is due Monday at 4 p.m. EST, and the plaintiffs must respond by 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The case started in federal court in Rhode Island, where churches and nonprofit organizations sued the Trump administration after it announced it would be suspending November SNAP payments amid the government shutdown. The plaintiffs claimed the administration was inexplicably refusing to use a multibillion-dollar, congressionally approved contingency fund to keep the program running in tumultuous times.

In late October, the groups won an order from U.S. District Judge John McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee who demanded that the administration use that fund to give SNAP recipients their full benefits. Last week, McConnell shot down the administration’s subsequent plan to only issue partial benefits.

A coalition of more than two dozen Democratic states have sued over the SNAP funding freeze, too. Some of those states started paying out full SNAP benefits after McConnell’s orders, but the government has since claimed that those payments were unauthorized and demanded the states “undo” them.

They won’t yet be required to do that, however. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee in Massachusetts federal court, lambasted the government for  “sending threatening letters” to the states on Saturday night, demanding they roll back the paid benefits.

“It’s hard to see how this is not being used as a leverage point,” Talwandi said of the lapse of SNAP payments. “People are hungry right now.”

The states claim that the government was making the process intentionally messy to avoid getting full SNAP payments out to recipients. The judge seemed to agree, and ordered that the states are not required to take back the benefits they paid out over the weekend.

“The Trump administration has been relentless in its effort to keep food off of Americans’ plates, but once again a court has stepped in to stop them,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the suing state leaders, said in a statement Monday.

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