Supreme Court Lets Trump Officials Limit Food Aid for Now

(Bloomberg) — The US Supreme Court let the Trump administration for now withhold $4 billion in food aid that a judge had ordered distributed Friday to fully fund November benefits for 42 million people.

The administrative stay, issued Friday night by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, is designed to give a federal appeals court more time to consider the government’s request for a longer-term order letting it avoid making the payment.

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The clash concerns the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which has been caught in the middle of the government shutdown.

The administration has said it would provide partial funding. But US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island said that was inadequate because the complexities of partial payments meant the money might not become available to SNAP recipients this week.

“The evidence shows that people will go hungry,” the judge said on Thursday.

Jackson’s two-page order noted that the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals had said earlier Friday that it intends to act “as quickly as possible” on the administration’s pending request to stay McConnell’s order. The 1st Circuit on Friday refused to issue its own administrative stay.

The Jackson order will apply for 48 hours after the 1st Circuit issues its decision. That will give the Trump administration time to return to the Supreme Court should it lose at the appeals court.

Jackson, one of the court’s liberals, is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from the 1st Circuit. Although the order was issued under her name, she might have consulted with her colleagues to get their views before acting.

At issue is whether the Department of Agriculture must use available reserves including money from a child nutrition program to avoid a SNAP shortfall.

The administration committed earlier this week to covering 65% of benefits this month after losing an earlier round in court, while warning that the recalculation process was likely to cause weeks or even months of delays. Previously, the administration had pledged to cover only 50% of the payments

“Such a funding lapse is a crisis,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court. “But it is a crisis occasioned by congressional failure and one that can only be solved through congressional action.”

The groups suing the administration told the 1st Circuit that the government was incorrectly claiming that tapping funds from child nutrition programs would put those programs at risk. The challengers are led by the Rhode Island State Council of Churches.

“The administration’s callous use of hunger as a political tool is reprehensible and must end,” Diane Yentel, president and chief executive officer of the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Efforts by the administration to delay or reduce SNAP benefits harms both the American people and nonprofit community food banks doing all they can to serve their neighbors in need.”

The Supreme Court case is Rollins v. Rhode Island State Council of Churches, 25a539.

–With assistance from Erik Larson.

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