UPDATE: As Congress Moves to End Shutdown, Courts Still Sorting Out Challenges to Fully Pay SNAP in November

Details

By Shaun Griswold

November 10, 2025

This article was updated at 4:30 p.m. EST with details from the recent filing to the Supreme Court by the U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump Administration to file its intent to continue with a legal fight over delivering full payments for food aid to at least 42 million Americans under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The order from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came shortly after an earlier Monday morning ruling from the First Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered full payments to states and the SNAP recipients who receive help through the low-income food aid program.

In a memo, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the Trump administration will barrel ahead with a formal request for the Supreme Court to take the SNAP case. Sauer filed the supplemental brief with the Court ahead of the 4 p.m. EST deadline set by Justice Jackson. 

Congress could also alleviate this court battle by passing a spending bill to fund the government. Late last night, a resolution on that front appeared with a bi-partisan bill passed in the Senate that would spend federal dollars for food, housing, agriculture, the Indian Health Service, a fully funded SNAP, and recharge the contingency fund into next year. 

Until that process in Congress is complete, November food aid through SNAP will remain an issue for the courts to help complete.

“That proposal, if ultimately adopted by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President, would end the shutdown and moot this application,” Sauer wrote. 

That line first appeared in the memo Sauer filed Monday morning, and became central to the Justice Department’s argument filed to the Court in the afternoon.

“The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government,” he wrote in the DOJ filing to the Supreme Court.

Millions of Americans have already received and spent SNAP benefits that were quickly issued last week under an order from a federal judge in Rhode Island that is now at the center of the dispute before the Supreme Court. Several states - including Oregon, California and New Mexico announced at the end of last week that full payments were sent out to recipients. SNAP benefits are paid to people on a rolling basis until the middle of the month, with the last round planned to go out on November 20, according to court documents. 

At least 500,000 Native American people receive SNAP benefits. Due to the shutdown and SNAP cuts, many tribal governments increased supply for food donations at tribally-run food pantries and distribution offices. Emergency orders were issued across Indian Country that activated ways to feed people with tribal natural resources, like buffalo and elk harvesting. 

The additional 40,000 pounds of food Lisa Ansell Frazier ordered in October for the Buffalo Youth Nation Project will stock food lodges onsite at four Wind River Reservation schools through December. 

"[The support] is coming from Native to Native, so there's no shame, there's no condemnation, there's no superiority, there's none of that," Frazier said. "It's giving with no expectation other than the health and wellness of the community."

The first delay in payments started on November 1. Relief started only after federal judges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts made the Trump administration tap a $6 billion contingency fund it outlined ahead of the government shutdown for SNAP coverage.

SNAP requires $8-9 billion to fully operate each month.

At first, the federal government hesitated, but eventually did demonstrate that it planned to use the total $6 billion for the contingency fund to cover benefits and the administrative costs states need to get aid to people. But that would guarantee only partial payments, which the federal judge in Rhode Island said is not enough and ordered the total SNAP payments with use of alternative federal funds, like one gathered through tariffs called Section 32.

The government lost its appeal on this matter, which has put it in the position where it wants the Supreme Court to intervene to pause SNAP full payments out of additional funding reserves.

“The district court’s unlawful orders risk upsetting that compromise and throwing into doubt how innumerable critical federal programs will be funded — a point on the equities that escaped the court of appeals. This Court should stay these wrongful edicts to let the political process that is rapidly playing out reach its conclusion,” the DOJ wrote in its supplemental brief to the Supreme Court to fight the First Circuit ruling..

“According to the record here, USDA did not take any steps to prepare to make partial payments either before or after the shutdown,” judges wrote in the First Circuit ruling. “Instead, it only acted after it was ordered to do so by the district court on October 31, during this litigation. The record reflects that, before early November, USDA did not even perform the calculation to determine what percentage of November benefits could be paid with the contingency funds.”

The disagreement in court centers on the federal government’s decision not to follow the Rhode Island judge’s order and make the transfer from the Section 32 fund.

“Nevertheless, the government does not contest that it did not even begin to follow the regulatory process for making partial payments until the district court ordered it to do so,” according to the First Circuit ruling. “That is apparently why the government had to correct its own mathematical calculations mid-stream, by informing the states on November 4 that contingency funds could cover 65 percent of November payments, as opposed to 50 percent of such payments, as the government had indicated on the previous day.”

The DOJ argued that even with the recalculation, it was compliant with the court’s order to spend down the contingency fund, and that the order to pay it fully with other funding sources was an overreach. Ultimately, it wants the Court to pause full SNAP payments until Congress ends the government shutdown, which the DOJ observed, “appears to be on the brink of breaking the deadlock, though that outcome is unsure.”

“Once more, the government unequivocally agrees that any lapse in SNAP funding is tragic. But it is a tragedy of Congress’s creation, by shutting the government down, allowing appropriations to lapse, and creating a Hobson’s choice for the Executive Branch on how to triage which crucial programs get limited available residual funds,” Sauer wrote.

Elyse Wild contributed reporting to this article.

More Stories Like This