Washington — The U.S. Department of Agriculture told a federal court that it will tap into a contingency fund to allow states to issue partial November benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown.
In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
There is roughly $4.6 billion in the contingency fund that can be used to cover November benefit payments, according to Penn. Officials have said fully covering those benefits would require roughly $9 billion. The $4.6 billion will be used to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” Penn said.
More than 42 million Americans rely on SNAP to buy food, and the program ran out of funding over the weekend due to the ongoing shutdown. The federal government funds SNAP by sending money to the states, which oversee food stamp programs for their residents.
Justice Department lawyers separately told the court that the administration will “fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds” by providing states with information on Monday that they can use to calculate benefits due to each eligible household.
Still, relief to food-aid recipients may not be immediate. Penn wrote in his declaration that there could be “payment errors and significant delays” because of variations among state eligibility systems, which have to be adjusted for the reduced payments.
“For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes States must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months,” he said.
Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy group that is representing a group of municipalities and nonprofit organizations that sued the Trump administration, said in a statement it is “considering all legal options to secure payment of full funds.”
“It shouldn’t take a court order to force our president to provide essential nutrition that Congress has made clear needs to be provided. But since that is what it takes, we will continue to use the courts to protect the rights of people,” Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
The filing came in response to an order issued by Judge John McConnell, who is overseeing the case brought by nonprofits and municipalities in Rhode Island. Last Friday, McConnell ordered the Trump administration to tap into the fund to cover the lapse in SNAP funding caused by the shutdown. The judge gave the government until Monday to file a status update about the distribution of the funds.
In a separate case in Massachusetts, two dozen states and the District of Columbia filed suit to get the administration to use the contingency funds. The judge in that case agreed with their argument that the government is required to use the money and likewise asked for an update by Monday.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress had argued that the contingency fund couldn’t legally be used to pay SNAP benefits because the underlying appropriation for the program had lapsed. Both judges disagreed with that argument and said the fund must be used to cover part of the shortfall.
“There is no question that the congressionally approved contingency funds must be used now because of the shutdown,” McConnell wrote in the written version of his order on Saturday.
He also said the government should “find the additional funds necessary (beyond the contingency funds) to fully fund the November SNAP payments.” The $5 billion in the contingency fund does not fully cover the $9 billion needed to pay out benefits for the month, and the administration had argued that calculating partial payments would be “exceedingly difficult, highly disruptive, and delayed.”
The judge said the government could choose to issue partial payments instead of finding other sources of funding, but added that “under no circumstances” could those payments be delayed beyond Wednesday.
The USDA warned late last month that federal food benefits would not go out to roughly 42 million recipients on Nov. 1 after it declined to tap into contingency funds to keep food stamp payments flowing during the shutdown. The agency pinned the blame for the pause on congressional Democrats for failing to back a GOP-backed stopgap measure that would fund federal agencies.
The shutdown entered its 34th day Monday and is poised to become the longest shutdown in U.S. history if lawmakers fail to reach agreement on a spending measure by late Tuesday.
The initial decision to halt the food aid appeared to be a shift from the USDA’s plan for a lapse in federal funding that was issued Sept. 30. The agency said in its plan that multi-year contingency funds could be used for state administrative expenses to ensure states could continue SNAP operations during a shutdown and were also available “to fund participant benefits” in the event of a funding lapse.
But the USDA wrote in a memo to states late last month that the reserve funds were “not legally available to over regular benefits,” and said the money was meant for priorities like assisting people in disaster areas.
Faced with the looming cutoff of food stamp payments, half the states of the District of Columbia, as well as the municipalities, sought relief from the federal courts. Some states said they would work to continue providing assistance to food-aid beneficiaries. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans receive food stamps.
