Supreme Court pauses order that Trump administration must pay full SNAP benefits
Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing that instead of Congress passing new SNAP funding, “a single district judge has devised his own solution: ordering USDA to cover the SNAP shortfall by transferring billions of dollars that were appropriated for different, equally critical food-security programs —and to do so within just one business day (i.e., by today).”
“This unprecedented injunction makes a mockery of the separation of powers,” the lawyers wrote. “Courts hold neither the power to appropriate nor the power to spend. Courts are charged with enforcing the law, but the law is explicit that SNAP benefits are subject to available appropriations.”
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The response said that the administration’s purported rationale for not tapping funds from Child Nutrition programs is “facially implausible.” Those programs have ”$23 billion on hand and require only $3 billion per month to operate,” the filing noted.
“Tapping Child Nutrition funds poses no realistic threat of leaving those programs underfunded,” lawyers for the plaintiffs said in their response. “The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) did not preclude the district court from entering a remedy for Defendants’ arbitrary and pretextual refusal to provide full funding to provide relief for children and families who are going hungry today.”
