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SCOTUS extends stay on SNAP benefits for now, impacting millions
By Breanne Deppisch, Shannon Bream, Bill Mears
Published November 11, 2025
The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an emergency pause on a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to immediately begin making full payments to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the month of November, keeping in limbo the nation's largest food aid program that serves roughly 42 million Americans.
Justices agreed to extend the emergency stay for two days, from Tuesday night to 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 13.
The action from the high court is a blow — if temporary — to the more than two dozen states who sued the Trump administration late last month to release the full SNAP benefit payments for November. The SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in the program's 60-year history at the start of the month as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, had agreed last week to pay just 65% of SNAP benefits for the month of November using the agency's contingency fund.
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An EBT sign is displayed on the window of a grocery store on Oct. 30, 2025 in the Flatbush neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
But a separate federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the administration to fund SNAP benefits in full for the month, prompting the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court on Monday to extend an emergency stay issued last week, citing the progress Congress has made toward resolving the ongoing shutdown.
Sauer noted that in their view, "the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority."
"The only way to end this crisis — which the executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government," he added.
Lower courts had sided with the states in ordering the administration to fund full SNAP benefits for the month, prompting the Trump administration to appeal the issue to the Supreme Court for emergency intervention.
An exterior view of the The Supreme Court building. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
States sued last month to keep the benefits in place, arguing that suspending the aid would disproportionately harm some tens of millions of vulnerable and low-income Americans in their states.
"Because of USDA’s actions, SNAP benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception," they said.
The state attorneys general, for their part, have accused the Trump administration of playing politics with SNAP benefits — a critical anti-hunger program that benefits roughly one in eight Americans.
"Any further stay would prolong that irreparable harm and add to the chaos the government has unleashed, with lasting impacts on the administration of SNAP," they told the Supreme Court in a filing of their own.
"The government has offered no defensible justification for that result," they noted, adding: "The administrative stay should be terminated, and no further stay should be granted."
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"SNAP/EBT Food Stamp Benefits Accepted" is displayed on a screen inside a Family Dollar Stores Inc. store in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a directive Saturday ordering that states "immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits," in compliance with the court order just 24 hours earlier, and to instead allocate only the partial 65% SNAP payments for the month that the administration had agreed to.
Trump officials said that states that failed to comply would face steep economic penalties, prompting emergency intervention from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who agreed on Monday afternoon to pause the USDA guidance, citing confusion over the guidance.
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New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin described the actions to reporters Monday as the "most heinous thing" he had seen while in office.
"There are more children in New Jersey on SNAP than consists of the entire population of our state's largest city," he said in a press conference Monday, in an effort to contextualize the number of people in the Garden State alone who receive SNAP benefits.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/scotus-issues-emergency-snap-ruling-impacting-millions