Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday temporarily paused a lower court order that required the Trump administration to cover full food stamp benefits for tens of millions of Americans in November, siding with the administration on a short-term basis in a legal fight that has quickly become a defining confrontation of the government shutdown.
The upshot is that the US Department of Agriculture will not have to immediately honor a lower court order that required it to transfer $4 billion to the key food assistance program by the end of the day. The decision, while temporary, could put at risk the full benefits for millions of Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to feed themselves and their families.
The order does not resolve the underlying legal questions raised by the case – and the Trump administration has already committed to using the program’s contingency fund to partially pay benefits. Rather, Jackson’s “administrative stay” freezes any additional action by the administration to give an appeals court additional time to review the case.
Jackson is the justice assigned to handle emergency appeals from the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals.
The legal fight over food stamps has emerged as a central pressure point between all three branches during the historically long government shutdown because it is one of the easiest to understand and most tangible impacts of that impasse so far. At stake is food assistance that nearly 42 million Americans rely on.
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