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Judge indicates she’ll intervene in fight over SNAP food assistance money

By CNN

Published October 30, 2025 1:46 pm

CNN, POOL

By Devan Cole, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge in Boston indicated Thursday that she will intervene in a high-stakes fight over the Trump administration’s decision to not tap into billions of dollars in emergency funds to help cover food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November.

“Right now, Congress has put money in an emergency fund for an emergency, and 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,” US District Judge Indira Talwani said near the end of a hearing, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps.

Though the judge’s options vary, one possibility is that she issues an emergency order that essentially compels the administration to tap into the emergency funds. While she indicated from the bench that she was likely to issue a ruling favorable to a group of Democratic attorneys general and governors who sued the administration earlier this week, she acknowledged that benefits, which should start being sent to recipients on November 1, will be delayed.

“We’re dealing with the reality that … the benefits aren’t going to be there on November 1,” she said.

Talwani said she would work quickly to issue her decision later Thursday.

Nearly 42 million Americans receive food stamps, a critical piece of the nation’s safety net. The program costs roughly $8.5 billion to $9 billion a month, while the contingency fund now has about $5.3 billion in it, according to court filings submitted by the Justice Department, which is representing USDA in the case.

If the judge orders the government to use the emergency funds, it will take time for the US Department of Agriculture and states to get their systems up and running again, which means at least some beneficiaries will likely have to wait for the November allotment.

It’s also unclear whether recipients will receive their full November benefits since the USDA’s contingency fund does not have enough money to cover the entire payments without drawing from other resources. But the Trump administration has shifted money to fund other priorities during the shutdown, including transferring $300 million to keep the WIC food assistance program for pregnant women, new moms and young children afloat for October.

Much of the discussion during Thursday’s hearing centered around the fact that the contingency fund contains far less than what is needed to fully cover November benefits for the millions of Americans who receive them. The judge said multiple times that federal law made clear that when the government is unable to pay benefits, it should reduce what it provides, not suspend the program altogether.

“It does seem to me really clear what Congress was trying to do,” Talwani said. “What Congress was trying to do is protect the American people.”

“The idea that we’re going to do the absolutely most drastic thing, which is that there’s not just less money but no money, seems the farthest thing from” what Congress intended, she said.

“We’re not going to make everyone drop dead” from hunger, Talwani added.

A group of Democratic attorneys general and governors from 25 states and Washington, DC, sued the administration on Tuesday over the US Department of Agriculture’s recent decision to not tap into the contingency fund.

Last week, USDA said that it was unable to use the rainy-day fund, reversing course from earlier agency guidance that said such a move was possible. In the program’s decades-long history, a government shutdown has never prevented it from distributing SNAP funds to states, which administer the benefits, though the program was at risk during the 2018-2019 impasse.

As the government shutdown nears its one-month mark, courts are increasingly being asked to intervene on an emergency basis to stave off a series of dramatic developments. Earlier this week, a federal judge in California indefinitely blocked the administration from laying off thousands of federal workers, saying the government was unlawfully using the shutdown as legal justification for the layoffs.

In the food stamps case, the attorneys general and governors argued the administration was violating federal law that requires the government to consistently fund the food stamps program and that its decision to not tap into the contingency fund ran afoul of federal rulemaking laws.

“USDA suspended SNAP benefits even though, on information and belief, it has funds available to it that are sufficient to fund all, or at least a substantial portion, of November SNAP benefits,” they wrote in the lawsuit. “Suspending SNAP benefits in these circumstances is both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.”

Delayed payments

States stopped the process of issuing benefits for November after the USDA sent them a letter on October 10 ordering them to do so. States send SNAP enrollees’ information to vendors every month so they can load funds onto recipients’ benefit cards.

Each state has a specific date by which they must send the information – ranging from a week before the start of the month to the first day of the month – in order for benefits to go out on time, according to the lawsuit. Payments are made on a staggered basis throughout the month.

In addition to acknowledging the likely delay in benefits, the judge on Thursday also asked about the process of providing partial payments to recipients next month since the contingency fund alone won’t cover the full amount.

An attorney for Massachusetts told Talwani that it would be up to the states to figure out how to reduce payments based on the available federal funds, but an attorney representing the Trump administration pushed back strongly on that idea.

The Justice Department lawyer, Jason Altabet, said that while it was up to USDA officials to make decisions on reductions in benefit amounts, the agency was extremely concerned about the prospect of having to do that work.

Changing positions

In its shutdown contingency plan, which has since been taken offline, USDA indicated that the contingency fund can be used for benefits in case of a lapse. The plan noted that “Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue.”

But on October 10, the agency began raising red flags, informing states that there is not enough money to pay full food stamp benefits in November if the lapse in federal funding continues and asking them to hold off on next month’s payments until further notice.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins doubled down on that position the following week, telling reporters that food stamps will run dry by the end of the month.

And last week, the USDA said it will not tap into the fund, stating in a memo that “contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits.”

This is not the first time that food stamps have been at risk during a shutdown. During the record-long impasse that began in December 2018, the USDA initially said benefits would run dry at the end of January. But the agency then said it would use a provision allowing it to make obligated payments within 30 days of a government funding lapse to cover February payments. That workaround ultimately wasn’t needed since the shutdown ended in late January.