Two federal judges have told the United States government it cannot leave November’s food aid unpaid. For the 42 million Americans who depend on it, though, the rulings do not yet answer the question that matters most: when will the money actually reach their cards?
The programme at the centre of the fight is SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It is the federal food assistance scheme that helps low-income Americans buy groceries, with monthly benefits loaded onto debit-style cards known as EBT cards. The US Department of Agriculture runs the programme; individual states administer it and load the cards.
When the federal government shut down, the Agriculture Department said November benefits would not be paid at all. Its website put it bluntly: the well had run dry, and there would be no benefits issued for November 1. States and non-profit groups sued, arguing the department was sitting on a contingency fund approved by Congress for exactly this kind of funding lapse and was choosing not to use it.
On October 31, two judges agreed with them, in two separate cases heard within about an hour of each other. In Boston, Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the refusal to use the contingency fund was “contrary to law”. She gave the department until Monday, November 3, to present a plan for issuing at least partial payments.
In Rhode Island, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. went further in a temporary restraining order. He told the administration to make full payments by November 3, or to come up with a workable plan for partial benefits by November 5. He criticised the department’s earlier offer of partial payments, saying: “The defendants failed to consider the practical consequences associated with this decision to only partially fund SNAP.”
The arithmetic is the problem. The contingency fund holds roughly $4.6 billion, according to figures cited in the litigation. A full month of SNAP costs between $8.5 billion and $9 billion. The fund alone cannot cover a full month, which is why the administration had earlier offered about 65 percent of the maximum benefit — an offer the courts rejected as a final answer, and one that would have left some recipients with nothing for the month.
A court order, however, is not a grocery run. Loading benefits onto millions of cards runs through state computer systems, and the administration told the courts it could take weeks, or even months in some states, to calculate and load the payments. Judge Talwani herself recognised that the money would not be available to people at the start of the month, even with the order in place.
The rulings land on day 34 of a shutdown with no end in sight, and in the same week Americans vote in midterm elections on November 3. The administration owes the Boston court its plan that same day. Whether Congress reopens the government first, whether the administration appeals, and how fast states can actually load the cards will decide whether November’s food aid arrives as a partial payment, a full one, or a promise that takes weeks to keep.
That is why this case reaches beyond one programme. SNAP feeds about one in eight Americans, most of them in poverty. A shutdown is usually described as a fight in Washington; this ruling is about what happens when that fight reaches the checkout, and whether a court can force the government to spend emergency money it would rather hold back. Other safety-net programmes funded through similar reserves will be watching what happens next.
What to watch now is concrete: the administration’s plan to the Boston court by November 3, the Rhode Island deadline of full payment or a partial-payment plan by November 5, and the first evidence from states about when cards are actually loaded. Until then, millions of families know the courts are on their side — and still do not know when they can shop.
