The Trump administration cannot withhold money from the federal food stamp program, known as SNAP, an appeals court ruled late Nov. 9.
The government is not likely to succeed in its appeal of an order that required the government to fully fund SNAP amid the government shutdown, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said.
“We do not take lightly the government’s concern that money used to fund November SNAP payments will be unavailable for other important nutrition assistance programs,” U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman wrote for the panel.
“But we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in determining that the overwhelming evidence of widespread harm that a stay would cause right now, by leaving tens of millions of Americans without food as winter approaches, outweighed the potential monetary harm to the government and [the other nutrition programs], months into the future.”…