Will SNAP benefits be paid in November? Here’s what we know about the judges’ rulings

By Tami Luhby, Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — Two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to use emergency funds to provide at least partial food stamp benefits to tens of millions of Americans in November, as the federal government shutdown drags on.

And President Donald Trump on Friday evening said that he’s instructed the administration’s lawyers to ask the courts how it can legally fund the benefits as quickly as possible.

“Even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding, just like I did with Military and Law Enforcement Pay.”

Still, the much needed assistance won’t come that quickly for many food stamp recipients. Also, it remains unclear whether they’ll receive their full benefits or a smaller amount since the US Department of Agriculture’s contingency fund doesn’t have enough money to cover the total cost.

Several legal and procedural challenges must be overcome before the benefits can start flowing to the nearly 42 million people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps. The US Department of Agriculture halted November allocations, arguing it doesn’t have the funds to provide them, which prompted a coalition of Democratic-led states and a group of cities, non-profits, unions and small businesses to sue earlier this week.

It’s now unclear whether the administration will appeal the rulings. However, the Justice Department signaled during a hearing on Thursday that it would do so if US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued an adverse ruling.

Though Talwani stopped short on Friday of requiring the administration to tap into the contingency fund, she said the USDA was required to use money in that rainy-day fund to partially cover November benefits and gave it until Monday to decide whether it would use only those funds or also dip into a separate pot of money.

A judge in Rhode Island said during proceedings Friday in a separate case over the SNAP payments that he was ordering the government to use the contingency fund to ensure some benefits could be distributed starting November 1. The administration could also appeal this decision.

Delayed payments

Whatever happens in court, it will take time for SNAP recipients to get access to any assistance in November.

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, often days or weeks before the new month begins. Those steps need to take place before SNAP can restart.

The delay will be felt immediately. Some 3 million recipients should receive their benefits on November 1, according to an estimate by Code for America, which works with all levels of government to improve access to food assistance and other safety net programs. The number grows to nearly 13.7 million by November 5, with remaining SNAP enrollees getting their allotments on a staggered basis during the month.

“They are not going out on time,” Gina Plata-Nino, interim director of SNAP at the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group, said of the November benefits.

Still, providing full payments would be the fastest way to get assistance to food stamp recipients.

“If the administration complies with the courts’ rulings to release the SNAP contingency funds immediately and supplements those amounts using its legal transfer authority, which the courts also affirmed, then SNAP benefits could begin to be issued with only a short delay,” said Dottie Rosenbaum, director of federal SNAP policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Partial payments harder to do

However, the process could become much more complicated — and time consuming — if the USDA opts to only tap into its contingency fund and doesn’t augment it with leftover tariff revenue dedicated to child nutrition programs, as it did with the WIC nutrition assistance program.

The emergency fund only has $5.3 billion remaining in it, while benefits total about $8.2 billion for the month, according to court filings submitted by the Justice Department, which represents the USDA in the case. (Other expenses and benefits bring the total closer to $9 billion.)

The USDA also has access to nearly $17 billion in tariff revenue, but a Justice Department attorney told a judge Friday that using the funds for SNAP would hurt the child nutrition programs that the money supports. Both Talwani and the judge in Rhode Island, John McConnell, left it up to the USDA to decide whether to use the additional resources to pay full benefits in November.

If only the contingency fund were tapped, the USDA would have to reduce benefits for all SNAP recipients, which it has never done, according to a declaration filed by the agency official who oversees the program. Also, state agencies would need to recode their systems to issue the smaller benefit amounts, which could result in payment errors.

“Because no template, processes, or past experience exist to inform a reduction in benefits, there are multiple variables which could lead to significant problems in attempting to reduce benefits for every SNAP household in the country,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of the USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, said in his declaration. “The ability, time and resources to accomplish this system change would vary greatly among State agencies, with some State agencies working with systems that are decades old.”

For at least some states, the process could take anywhere from a few weeks to several months, Penn said, drawing upon informal conversations with state agencies.

Before states could even act, the USDA would also have to determine how to calculate and authorize the reduced allotments. This effort could be hampered if its employees have been furloughed during the shutdown or laid off or departed amid the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government, Plata-Nino said.

While some states have identified potential ways to issue smaller benefits quickly, the methods must be programmed, tested and verified, which could take time, she noted.

If recipients receive partial benefits in November, they would get retroactive payments to make them whole once the government reopens, she said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.