A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to continue paying for food stamps during the government shutdown, siding with local officials and nonprofits that had sought to spare millions of low-income Americans from losing benefits in a matter of days.
It was the second of two rulings in the span of about an hour that found the administration had acted unlawfully, after it had refused to tap an emergency reserve — enacted by Congress and totaling in the billions of dollars — to sustain the critical anti-hunger program.
But it remained unclear if or when food stamps would actually reach the roughly 42 million people who rely on monthly federal help to purchase groceries. It was also unclear the exact amounts that they would receive. Lawyers for the Trump administration had previously suggested it could take weeks to disburse benefits, and the Justice Department could still try to appeal in the case, perhaps further delaying aid.
A spokesman for the agency and a spokeswoman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The legal wrangling concerned the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Without a last-minute intervention, the decades-old safety net program is set to run out of funds on Saturday, exacting a substantial economic toll on families more than four weeks into a shutdown seemingly without an end in sight.
Despite the imminent lapse, the Trump administration had maintained that it would not try to cover the shortfall, not even by using billions of dollars that Congress had previously set aside for SNAP to address possible emergencies. That triggered a series of lawsuits, as state and local officials, nonprofits and others argued that the White House had a legal and moral obligation to provide the benefits.
In one of the cases, Judge John J. McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, ordered on Friday that the Trump administration “must distribute the contingency money timely, or as soon as possible, for the Nov. 1 payments to be made.”
His order came shortly after another federal court in Massachusetts handed an early victory to about two dozen states, which similarly had sued to force the release of food stamp funding.
In that case, Judge Indira Talwani, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, found that the decision to halt SNAP benefits was “unlawful.” She required the administration to explain by Monday how it would fund aid in November.
“Congress has put money in an emergency fund,” Judge Talwani said during a hearing in the case this week. “It’s hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency, when there’s no money and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits.”
The twin court defeats nonetheless amounted to a major rebuke of the White House, where President Trump’s leading deputies have maintained that they could do little to save SNAP — even after taking unusual steps to rearrange the budget to sustain other programs while the government remained closed.
“The American people are already suffering, and the suffering is going to get a lot worse,” Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday, insisting that Mr. Trump had “tried to do everything” in his power to make the shutdown as “unpainless as possible.”
With SNAP, the potential loss of federal aid risked severe financial distress for the roughly one in eight Americans enrolled in the program. Fearing the end of federal support, a handful of states had scrounged in recent days to provide food stamps on their own, though many said that they could only provision aid for a few days or weeks.
The SNAP benefits, which average around $187 a month per recipient, cost the federal government about $8 billion monthly, which lawmakers must regularly replenish as part of their work to fund the government. But the program also maintains a reserve in case of emergencies or shortfalls, which many Democrats and Republicans have encouraged the Trump administration to tap during the shutdown. That reserve currently stands at about $5 billion, enough to provide at least partial payments next month.
The Agriculture Department initially said it would use that money if the government remained closed, but reversed its policy in late October, saying that it could not legally drain the available reserves except in response to natural disasters. At a news conference Friday on Capitol Hill, Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, argued that the emergency fund was “only allowed to flow if the underlying program is funded” by Congress.
Democrats largely rejected her interpretation of the law. The agency’s moves also prompted a series of lawsuits, including one filed by cities and nonprofit groups, who argued that the White House had “needlessly plunged SNAP into crisis.”
“Where there are appropriated funds available, benefits have to be furnished. And in this case, appropriated funds are available,” said Michael Torcello, a lawyer representing the groups that sued, during a hearing on Friday.
Officials in Arizona, California, New York, Massachusetts, Nevada and other states filed their own lawsuit earlier this week. Michelle Pascucci, a lawyer for the attorney general of Massachusetts who represented the states, told Judge Talwani at a hearing on Thursday that the loss of SNAP benefits could prove dire.
“Millions of Americans will lose the benefits they’ve had for decades,” she said.
In filings submitted ahead of the hearing, the Trump administration reaffirmed its opposition to using the emergency funds, even as it acknowledged it had ample leftover money there and in other accounts to spare millions of people from benefit cuts. Officials told the court that the law did not allow them to transfer or spend the cash absent a clear directive from Congress.
“What a sick joke,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “The fact is: Funding exists to keep SNAP benefits flowing, and President Trump has instead chosen to force millions of Americans to go hungry.”
Maya Shwayder contributed reporting from Boston.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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