The government must send out full November SNAP benefits by tomorrow, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
“People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for… even another day is simply unacceptable,” said U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. at a hearing Thursday.
McConnell gave the government one day to fulfill the ruling, ordering the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the SNAP program, to send out the funds by Friday.
More than 143,000 people in Rhode Island and 1.1 million people in Massachusetts rely on SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, for food. Payments expected Nov. 1 did not go out, after the federal government said it ran out of regular funding due to the government shutdown.
On Oct. 30, a coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations, mainly from Rhode Island, mounted a legal challenge in federal court. They argued that by failing to issue SNAP benefits, their citizens and clients would need food aid from elsewhere, resulting in large costs to their institutions.
In response, the USDA argued that its emergency funds, which total $5.25 billion, would not be enough to cover the complete cost of the nation’s November benefits. USDA lawyers said that a partial payment would involve complicated system changes that would take weeks, if they could be done at all.
One day later, Judge McConnell ruled that the USDA must either fully fund SNAP by Monday, Nov. 3, or at least partially fund SNAP by Wednesday, Nov. 5. The order said that the USDA must use its emergency funds, and that the agency also has the authority to draw from other sources of funding to pay SNAP benefits.
On Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the government had missed those deadlines.
Tyler Becker, attorney for the Justice Department, argued that the government had fulfilled its responsibility to issue partial payments and that states had been causing the delay.
McConnell then issued an order to send out full SNAP benefits by Friday, Nov. 7.
“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have, and should have, been avoided,” McConnell said.
Food banks in Rhode Island and across the country have reported surges in demand since the USDA initially announced it might not send out November benefits.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story and will be updated.