A federal appeals court on Friday denied the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower court’s order to fully fund SNAP for the month of November.
The Justice Department responded by asking the Supreme Court to intervene by issuing an emergency stay.
The unanimous decision, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, came as at least nine states had already begun issuing SNAP benefits under the direction of the federal agency that operates SNAP, even as the Trump administration was fighting a judge’s ruling ordering those benefits to be paid.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which operates the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, told states Friday afternoon that it was working to pay November SNAP benefits in full.
A letter from the USDA states that “later today, FNS will complete the necessary processes to make funds available to support its subsequent transmission of completed issuance files to its EBT processor.”
A group of local governments and nonprofits had urged the Court of Appeals to uphold an order requiring the Trump administration to pay November SNAP benefits in full.
The Trump administration had asked the circuit court to issue an emergency stay of U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr.’s Thursday ruling ordering the administration to fully fund SNAP. for today, saying they are saving additional funds to pay for child nutrition programs known as WIC.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on drug prices, Nov. 6, 2025, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington.
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At issue was whether a federal judge can force the government to use $4 billion from Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935 to fund November SNAP benefits.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, posting on social media about the appeals court decision, called it “judicial activism at its worst.”
“A single district court in Rhode Island should not be able to take center stage in the shutdown, try to disrupt political negotiations that could produce quick political fixes for SNAP and other programs, and dictate its own preferences for how scarce federal funds should be spent.”
The Trump administration says Section 32 funds are needed to support WIC programs and that using that money to pay for SNAP would essentially “starve Peter to feed Paul.”
“Indeed, if every beneficiary of a mandatory spending program could go to court and force the agency to transfer funds from elsewhere, the result would be an unworkable and conflicting plethora of court orders that would reduce the federal treasury to a gigantic game of deception,” they argued in a court filing.
The groups that filed the lawsuit on Friday rejected the government’s argument.
“Defendants’ brazen claim that they will face irreparable harm is completely baseless, and they callously ignore the serious harm that plaintiffs and millions of Americans will suffer if they are successful,” they wrote, saying that the $23 billion in remaining funding is more than enough to cover both WIC, which requires $3 billion a month to operate, and SNAP, which typically requires about $8.5 billion.
As the legal battle continued Friday, at least nine states said they began issuing SNAP benefits in November.
Officials in California, Wisconsin, Kansas and Pennsylvania said benefits were already available to some recipients. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also said she had ordered state agencies to issue full SNAP benefits for the month.
In a statement, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said his state “acted immediately” to process SNAP benefits after receiving USDA funding. Vermont also processed full SNAP benefits for November, according to state Treasurer Mike Pieciak.
Kansas officials said they had already distributed more than $31.6 million in SNAP benefits to 86,000 households, and Wisconsin officials said they had distributed $104.4 million to 337,137 households.
During a tense court hearing Thursday, Judge McConnell accused the Trump administration of “withholding SNAP benefits for political reasons.”
Last week McConnell ordered the government use emergency funds pay SNAP in time for Nov. 1 payments, but the administration, saying they had to save the additional funds for WIC, committed to only partial financing BREAK.
McConnell, in his ruling Thursday, ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP for the month of November by Friday. He directly rebuked President Donald Trump for declaring “his intention to defy” a court order when Trump said earlier this week that SNAP will not be funded until the government reopens its ongoing activities. government shutdown.
In its court filing Friday, the Trump administration said Trump was “simply stating a fact” and was not using SNAP as leverage.
“The district court also accused the president of bad faith for declaring that full SNAP benefits would not resume until the government reopens. But that was just a fact finding: the allocation has expired and it is up to Congress to resolve this crisis,” the document says.
The government has asked the circuit court to allow USDA to continue partial payment of SNAP and “not force the agency to transfer billions of dollars from another safety net program without certainty of its replenishment.”
McConnell himself denied a request from the government to suspend his own decision, saying: “The request for a stay of this decision, whether a stay or an administrative stay, is denied. People have been without money for too long. Not making payments to them for even one more day is simply unacceptable.”
“People have been without money for too long, not paying them even one more day is simply unacceptable,” the judge said.
Micha from ABC Newshe Dad coContributed to this report.
