(The Hill) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to immediately halt a judge’s ruling that requires full Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) November payments be made to states by Friday.
An appeals court declined to block the ruling ahead of the deadline, and the administration warned it is “untenable at every turn” and will “sow further shutdown chaos.” The new filing asks for an intervention by 9:30 p.m. EST.
“The core power of Congress is that of the purse, while the Executive is tasked with allocating limited resources across competing priorities,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the emergency appeal.
“But here, the court below took the current shutdown as effective license to declare a federal bankruptcy and appoint itself the trustee, charged with picking winners and losers among those seeking some part of the limited pool of remaining federal funds,” Sauer continued.
The appeal was docketed after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had already sent a letter to regional SNAP directors indicating it was working to comply and process the payments.
The lapse in SNAP funding has become a prominent, visible repercussion of the record-breaking government shutdown, which has left government employees without a paycheck sparked increased airline delays and halted certain government services.
One day earlier, U.S. District Judge John McConnell ruled the administration needed to provide full SNAP payments for November by Friday.
McConnell, an appointee of former President Obama, said administration’s plan to deplete an emergency fund and provide partial SNAP benefits for November wasn’t sufficient because of expected delays with the recalculations.
He ruled officials needed to tap a separate source of child nutrition program funds to fill the remaining gap.
“But it obviously was not unlawful for the agency to see things differently—and refuse to starve Peter to feed Paul, by gambling school lunches tomorrow in exchange for more SNAP money today,” Sauer wrote to the Supreme Court. “Indeed, that sort of hard tradeoff is precisely the sort of decision that Congress committed to agency discretion and placed beyond the reach of judges.”
A group of cities, churches, nonprofits and a union that challenged the lapse has argued McConnell’s ruling should stand.
“The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that their decision to make partial payments despite the attending weeks or months of delays was arbitrary,” they wrote in court filings.
