The government must send out full November SNAP benefits by tomorrow, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
“People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for… even another day is simply unacceptable,” U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. said during a brief but tense hearing Thursday.
McConnell gave the government one day to fulfill the ruling, ordering the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the SNAP program, to send out the funds by Friday.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice filed a notice with the court in the hours after the hearing that they are appealing the decision to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.
More than 143,000 people in Rhode Island and 1.1 million people in Massachusetts rely on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for food. Payments expected Nov. 1 did not go out, after the federal government said it ran out of regular funding due to the government shutdown.
On Oct. 30, a coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations, mainly from Rhode Island, mounted a legal challenge in federal court. They argued that by failing to issue SNAP benefits, their citizens and clients would need food aid from elsewhere, resulting in large costs to their institutions.
In response, the USDA argued that their emergency funds, which total $5.25 billion, would not be enough to cover the complete cost of the nation’s November benefits. USDA lawyers said that a partial payment would involve complicated system changes that would take weeks, if they could be done at all.
One day later, Judge McConnell ruled that the USDA must either fully fund SNAP by Monday, Nov. 3, or at least partially fund SNAP by Wednesday, Nov. 5. The order said that USDA must use its emergency funds, and that the agency also has the authority to draw from other sources of funding to pay SNAP benefits.
On Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the government had missed those deadlines.
Tyler Becker, an attorney for the Justice Department, argued that the government had fulfilled its responsibility to issue partial payments, and that states had been causing the delay.
McConnell then issued an order to send out full SNAP benefits by Friday, Nov. 7.
“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have, and should have, been avoided,” McConnell said.
In response to questions about the ruling, a USDA spokesperson blamed the government shutdown, and Democrats, for the crisis in SNAP funding.
“Senate Democrats have voted 14 times against reopening the government,” the statement read. “This compromises not only SNAP, but farm programs, food inspection, animal and plant disease protection, rural development, and protecting federal lands. Senate Democrats are withholding services to the American people in exchange for healthcare for illegals, gender mutilation, and other unknown ‘leverage’ points.”
Food banks in Rhode Island and across the country have reported surges in demand since the USDA initially announced it might not send out November benefits.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, a food bank in Newport, is one of the plaintiffs in the case. Heather Strout, the center’s executive director, said Thursday that record numbers of clients have visited the food pantry. Many of the visitors had never been to a food bank before, she said.
“This is a need we’ve never seen before,” Strout said. “It’s a huge amount of anxiety and stress… to think about how you’re going to feed your family.”
Kevin Love Hubbard, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the team of lawyers is watching for the Trump administration’s response.
“I think it’s really easy in this moment to think that nothing matters – that the Trump administration is just going to ignore the laws and defy the courts,” Hubbard said. “And I think it’s really important to not give into that cynicism – to look at the small things we each can do to play a role in ensuring that the rule of law perseveres in this country. And today was a good day.”
This story has been updated to add information from Heather Strout, Kevin Love Hubbard, a USDA spokesperson and to include that the federal government is appealing the decision.
