Michael Bilow of Motif attended the 3:30pm court hearing and is reporting based on his personal observations.
At a hearing in US District Court in Providence on the afternoon of Thu, Nov 6, Judge John J. McConnell Jr seemed incredulous that the option in his Oct 31 order to make partial instead of full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly “food stamp”) payments for November, intended to speed up the process and get those partial benefits to recipients by no later than Wed, Nov 5, actually introduced delays that the government contended could add weeks or months. Because the federal government provides money to state governments for further disbursal to recipients, and states never before needed to calculate partial payments, the practical effect was to introduce substantial procedural delay in making benefits available for use, the judge was told.
The failure of Congress to authorize spending in the new fiscal year that began Oct 1 has resulted in a shutdown of the federal government, including monthly US Department of Agriculture (USDA) SNAP payments due Nov 1 to about 42 million recipients.
“The administration was required under this Court’s Order to immediately make the full payment for November SNAP benefits considering the finding of irreparable harm that would occur. And just to be clear, irreparable harm means harm to families, elderly, children, and others that cannot be undone. The evidence shows that people will go hungry, food pantries will be overburdened, and needless suffering will occur. That’s what irreparable harm here means. 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,” the judge said from the bench.
Kristin Bateman of the Democracy Forward Foundation, arguing for the plaintiffs, used only three of her allotted 15 minutes of argument. “This court’s order gave defendants a choice. They could fully fund November SNAP benefits, or they could come up with a plan to partially fund those benefits using the contingency funds, so long as that plan allowed for expeditious and timely payment to the beneficiaries who rely on SNAP for food, and so long as that plan was not arbitrary and capricious The defendants have not done that. By their own admission, their plan will mean that in some states, beneficiaries don’t get the money they need for food for weeks or even months, and the reasons they have given for making that choice are facially implausible. They say that they are doing that to conserve needed funding for child nutrition programs like school lunches, but tapping into those funds now to fully fund the November SNAP benefits will not take needed money away from those child nutrition programs unless the government shutdown lasts until next June. Basing a decision on such a highly unlikely set of events is not reasoned decision making, and it’s particularly unreasonable because the defendants have not explained why they would choose to let 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, go hungry now, in order to guard against the extreme outside chance that come June, there won’t be enough money to fund child nutrition programs,” Bateman argued.
“In fact, the record shows that conserving money for child nutrition programs is not the reason; that’s a pretext. What defendants are really trying to do is to leverage people’s hunger to gain partisan political advantage in the shutdown fight. In these particular facts and circumstances, the defendants choice not to fully fund November SNAP benefits is arbitrary and capricious, and, in these particular facts and circumstances, the court should order defendants to provide that full funding immediately. It’s already six days into November. People are waiting for the assistance they need to be able to afford food, and there’s no more time to wait. So we would ask that the court enforce its existing order by requiring immediate release of the funds necessary to make full November SNAP payments,” Bateman said.
As a result, the judge issued a new order that the federal government make full rather than partial payments for November, and that this be done within one day on Fri, Nov 7. The judge held that in addition to contingency funds already consumed to make partial payments, the necessary funds could be drawn from reserves under Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, derived from 30% of customs receipts on imports from the prior calendar year, and therefore constitute a permanent statutory appropriation by Congress.
“The administration erroneously and unintentionally conflates Section 32 funds and the child nutrition programs by referring to them in tandem, as though they were one and the same. In essence, they erroneously claim that Section 32 funds are to be used exclusively to fund the child nutrition program, but that is incorrect,” the judge said from the bench. “While much of this funding has been appropriated for the child nutrition program, USDA has statutory authority under 7 USC §2257 to authorize transfers of these funds interchangeably for the ‘miscellaneous expenses of the work of any bureau, division, or office of the Department of Agriculture.’”
The judge noted that USDA had previously used Section 32 funds to keep the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program running, undermining any legal objection to doing it for SNAP, and drawing $4 billion from Section 32 reserves to fully fund SNAP for November would still leave more than $19 billion in the fund. While the government contends that drawing from Section 32 reserves could put 29 million children at risk of there being insufficient funds for child nutrition programs traditionally funded this way, the judge said that the evidence was that would not happen unless the government shutdown extended past May 2026, which he deemed “implausible,” and if Congress did not act to restore SNAP funding and replenish the account. “More importantly, without SNAP funding for the month of November, 16 million children are immediately at risk of going hungry. This should never happen in America. In fact, it’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,” the judge said from the bench.
Judge McConnell repeatedly referenced a Truth Social post by President Donald Trump, “The president stated his intent to defy the Court Order when he said, quote, SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens, unquote.” (What Trump actually wrote was, “SNAP BENEFITS… will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”) The judge at the end of the hearing, which lasted less than a half-hour, returned to this point, “The defendant’s stated desire to conserve funding for the child nutrition program is entirely pretextual given the numerous statements made in recent weeks by the President and his administration officials who admit to withholding full SNAP benefits for political reasons.”
Despite outright finding that the government claims were “pretextual,” a blunt way of accusing the government of lying, the judge was careful to acknowledge the difficult if not impossible position the attorney representing USDA, Tyler Becker, found himself in: “I’m not accusing you, and I don’t think the plaintiffs are either, of bad faith in it, or of acting inappropriate. I think what the plaintiffs are saying – I mean, they’ve not, and I think rightly so, haven’t asked for contempt – what they’re merely saying is: enforce the order that is plain and straightforward, and clearly the government didn’t read the order in its plain language in that regard…”
Indeed, the judge noted that, as federal employees, Becker and the Court staff needed to hold the hearing were all working without pay.
Judge McConnell in Providence appeared so angry that, without any actual request from the government, he preempted such a request and said from the bench, “The request for a stay of this decision, either a stay or an administrative stay, is denied. People have gone without for too long. Not making payments to them for even another day is simply unacceptable.” Such a stay, which would delay the effect of his order, is relatively ordinary if the case is appealed, as he clearly expected.
After the close of the hearing, the court issued a 27-page written opinion detailing the terms of its order. Almost immediately, the government filed a notice of appeal to the First Circuit in Boston.
The case in Providence at the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island is Rhode Island State Council of Churches et al. v. Rollins et al. (1:25-cv-00569). The case in Boston at the US Court of Appeal for the First Circuit is Rhode Island State Council of Churches et al. v. Rollins et al. (25-2089).
UPDATE: The First Circuit in the early evening of Fri, Nov 7, denied the government request for an administrative stay of the lower court order, effectively allowing the payment of full SNAP benefits by the end of the day. The government then asked the US Supreme Court for an emergency stay, which was granted by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her capacity as the duty justice assigned to handle emergencies from the First Circuit, which she granted late that night, providing that full SNAP benefits need not be paid until 48 hours after the First Circuit makes its decision, allowing time for a further appeal by either side to the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: The First Circuit at 11:49pm, Nov 9, issued a 29-page opinion in favor of the lower court order that full SNAP benefits be paid.
See our coverage of the SNAP crisis:
• “SNAP Benefits Must Be Paid, PVD Federal Court Rules: Contingency funds must be used despite government objections”, by Michael Bilow, Oct 31, 2025.
• “SNAP (Food Stamps) Emergency: RI announces support during federal shutdown”, by Michael Bilow, Oct 29, 2025.