The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow to a group of mostly Rhode Island-based nonprofits and cities that are pushing the Trump administration to issue full November SNAP benefits.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an administrative stay that may result in freezing SNAP benefits before most receive them. Some states had reportedly already started to issue payments after an earlier court ruling ordering the administration to release the money.
The confusion is the result of a flurry of court activity.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to issue full November benefits, but the administration immediately appealed the decision. On Friday evening, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston rejected the administration’s request to pause benefit payments while the court considered the case. Hours later, the Supreme Court stepped in when Justice Jackson issued the stay.
The goal, Jackson wrote in the brief order, is to give the appeals court time to issue a ruling.
More than 140,000 people in Rhode Island and 1.1 million people in Massachusetts receive SNAP benefits, and it’s unclear as of Saturday when — or if — they can expect this month’s payments to arrive. Previously, the U.S. The Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, as well as President Trump, said that the federal government shutdown would prevent payments from going out in November.
In response, a coalition of cities and nonprofits — which include the cities of Provide and Pawtucket, alongside many nonprofits like the United Way of Rhode Island and the Rhode Island State Council of Churches — filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island, claiming that the federal government had the money to send out SNAP payments, but was choosing not to.
On Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. ordered SNAP payments to go out by the next day, Friday Nov. 7.
“SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation's history,” McConnell said from the bench on Thursday. “This is a problem that could have, and should have, been avoided.”
Justice Jackson’s administrative stay will expire 48 hours after “the First Circuit’s resolution of the pending motion, which the First Circuit is expected to issue with dispatch.”
