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A federal appeals court late Sunday denied the Trump administration’s request to block an order mandating full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments during the government shutdown.
The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a lower court’s decision, finding that the government’s plan to issue partial food stamp payments would result in unacceptable delays, reported The Hill.
“It also knew full well that making partial payments would be technically difficult, as it had never been done before,” The Hill quoted US Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman as writing for the unanimous panel.
“But it proceeded to do nothing to attempt to solve that problem over the following three weeks. It made no calculations, prepared no tables, and took no other logistical steps to prepare for a shortfall,” Rikelman added.
The ruling upholds US District Judge John McConnell’s order requiring officials to cover the remaining gap for November SNAP payments by transferring roughly $4 billion from child nutrition funds—a move the Trump administration had argued would jeopardize those programs.
Payments remain temporarily paused under a Friday night hold from Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but the appeals court’s decision sets a 48-hour clock for the hold to expire.
The ruling comes as Congress edges closer to ending the 41-day government shutdown. Just before the appeals decision, the Senate advanced a measure to reopen the government after a bipartisan vote.
The 1st Circuit panel included two Biden appointees, Rikelman and Gustavo Gelpí, and Obama appointee David Barron. The Trump administration had appealed after McConnell, another Obama appointee, found the administration acted arbitrarily by refusing to transfer child nutrition funds to fully fund SNAP.
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View AllMcConnell had previously required officials to at least draw down a $5 billion SNAP emergency fund. When that proved insufficient, he ordered full November payments, citing delays that partial benefits would create and directing officials to identify alternative funding sources.
“That unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers,” the Justice Department wrote in court filings.
“The core power of Congress is that of the purse, while the Executive is tasked with allocating limited resources across competing priorities. But here, the court below took the current shutdown as effective license to declare a federal bankruptcy and appoint itself the trustee, charged with picking winners and losers among those seeking some part of the limited pool of remaining federal funds,” the filing continued.
With inputs from agencies
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