Judge McConnell’s Order for Trump Admin to Pay SNAP, Stayed by Supreme Court

Judge McConnell’s Order for Trump Admin to Pay SNAP, Stayed by Supreme Court

Arguably, the most liberal member of the United States Supreme Court stayed the order of Rhode Island Federal District Court Judge John McConnell’s order that required the Trump Administration to pay SNAP benefits immediately.

 

McConnell issued the order to the Trump administration.  “People have gone without for too long,” McConnell said during a hastily called hearing Thursday. “Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.”

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The interim order from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, known as an administrative stay, stops the government from having to comply immediately with McConnell's order.

 

The Trump administration, on Thursday, immediately after McConnell’s order, asked the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to halt the order.

 

The First Circuit refused to immediately take up the issue.

 

In response, the Trump administration filed with the Supreme Court requesting a stay.

 

Jackson’s order remains in effect until the First Circuit decides whether to place a longer-term pause on McConnell’s ruling. The appeal went to Jackson first because she is the justice assigned to oversee the First Circuit.

 

The Trump administration, through the Solicitor General’s office, has argued that McConnell’s order is a violation of the separation of powers.

 

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court that McConnell’s order “makes a mockery of the separation of powers.”

 

“The core power of Congress is that of the purse, while the Executive is tasked with allocating limited resources across competing priorities,” he wrote. “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.” 

 

And, while the federal courts ping-pong the issue, 42 million Americans whose primary source of food comes from SNAP benefits continue to go without. The primary cause of the non-payment of the SNAP payments is the federal government shutdown.