The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.
The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.
The order will expire just before midnight Thursday.
The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it’s not clear how quickly full payments would resume.
The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the nine justices to say she would have revived the lower court orders immediately, but didn’t otherwise explain her vote. Jackson signed the initial order temporarily freezing the payments.
Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.
How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it’s easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.
Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.
An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.
The Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn’t be up to the courts.
“The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. “The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government.”
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