Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Trump's administration must to continue to fund SNAP, the nation's biggest food aid program, during the government shutdown, per the AP. The rulings came a day before the US Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown.
The administration has said it wasn't allowed to use a contingency fund with about $5 billion in it for the program, but the judges rejected that. A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the program must be funded using at least the contingency funds—and asked for an update on progress by Monday. A Massachusetts-based judge also gave the administration until Monday to say whether it would partially pay for the benefits for November with contingency money or fund them fully with additional funds.
It wasn't immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after the ruling, a process that often takes one to two weeks. The rulings are likely to face appeals. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation's social safety net. Word in October that it would be a Nov. 1 casualty of the shutdown sent states, food banks, and SNAP recipients scrambling to figure out how to secure food. Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions.
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