On October 31, I published a blog post explaining some of the changes around SNAP benefits in North Carolina, including immediate impacts of the federal government shutdown and more long-term impacts from changes in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1) that started to go into effect November 1. While the H.R. 1 changes remain in effect (see my prior post for more details), there has been a whirlwind of activity in pending lawsuits regarding the payment of November SNAP benefits that was paused due to the government shutdown. This post recaps some of the recent developments and what they have meant for states, including North Carolina.
On Thursday, Oct. 30, a lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Rhode Island by a number of nonprofit organizations, businesses, and municipalities (including Durham, North Carolina), asking the court to compel the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to release available funds to pay SNAP benefits to eligible participants. On Friday, Oct. 31, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. issued an oral order directing the USDA to distribute money for the November SNAP payments to be made by states. On Saturday, Nov. 1, Judge McConnell issued a written ruling, ordering the USDA and other Trump administration defendants either fully fund November SNAP benefits by Monday, Nov. 1 or otherwise, at least use contingency funds to make a partial payment of SNAP benefits by Wednesday, Nov. 5. On Monday, Nov. 3, the defendants filed a status report with the court, indicating they would partially fund SNAP by using $4.65 billion in contingency funds to cover 50% of November SNAP benefits, but also stated that doing so would take weeks or even months to accomplish.
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, the USDA issued a notice to states announcing that it was reducing SNAP maximum allotments to 50 percent of each eligible household’s current allotment for Nov. 2025, effective Nov. 1. The USDA notice directed state agencies to take immediate action to implement this reduction, including notifying SNAP households of the reduction. Accordingly, some states, including North Carolina, began announcing that partial SNAP benefits would be loaded onto EBT cards within the coming weeks.
On Thursday, Nov. 6, Judge McConnell ordered the USDA and other defendants to make full SNAP payments to states by Friday, Nov. 7, finding the administration’s delays in making partial payments did not comply with his prior orders. That same day, the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal of Judge McConnell’s orders.
The next day, Friday, Nov. 7, involved a flurry of legal action. First, the Trump administration filed an emergency motion for an administrative stay and a stay pending appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This motion asked the court to stay (temporarily pause) the enforcement of Judge McConnell’s Oct. 31 and Nov. 6 orders pending the Trump administration’s appeal, to the extent that those orders required the USDA to expend funds beyond the SNAP contingency fund. Hours later, the First Circuit denied the emergency motion for an administrative stay, while stating that its decision on the government’s request to stay the order pending appeal would be forthcoming. By that evening, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Judge McConnell’s orders. On Friday night, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued the administrative stay of Judge McConnell’s orders that the government had requested. By its terms, this administrative stay—a pause in enforcement of Judge McConnell’s orders to pay out SNAP benefits—would terminate forty-eight hours after the First Circuit’s resolution of the Trump administration’s pending motion to stay pending appeal.
As all of this action was unfolding in the courts on Friday, Nov. 7, state agencies were simultaneously beginning to act based on Judge McConnell’s Nov. 6 order, which had ordered the Trump administration to pay out full SNAP benefits to states by Nov. 7. Consequently, a handful of states across the country began directing their state agencies to issue full November SNAP benefits to eligible individuals on Nov. 7. In North Carolina, on the other hand, partial November SNAP benefits were distributed at approximately 65% of the normal maximum allotment for over 586,000 households in North Carolina. According to NCDHHS, households that typically receive the maximum amount of SNAP benefits each month saw their benefits reduced by 35%, while those who normally receive a lower amount of benefits experienced deeper reductions, and thousands of people received no benefits at all. As reported by the Associated Press, more than 190,000 households in North Carolina received just $16 or less.
On Saturday, Nov. 8, the USDA issued a new notice to state agencies, warning that states “must not transmit full benefit issuance files to EBT processors” and instead, “must continue to process and load the partial issuance files that reflect the 35 percent reduction of maximum allotments detailed in the November 5 guidance.” This USDA memorandum also instructed states to “immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” advising that “failure to comply…may result in USDA taking various actions, including cancellation of the Federal share of State administrative costs and holding States liable for any overissuances that result from the noncompliance.”
NCDHHS also released a statement on Saturday, Nov. 8, explaining that the agency had been on track to release full SNAP benefits to North Carolinians over the weekend, but paused this effort in acknowledgment of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Friday night decision that granted the Trump administration’s requested stay of the orders that required full payment of SNAP benefits.
On Sunday, Nov. 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied in part the Trump administration’s motion to stay Judge McConnell’s orders pending its appeal of Judge McConnell’s orders (“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. 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[.]”).
On Monday, Nov. 10, the Trump administration notified the Supreme Court that it intended to continue to pursue the stay of Judge McConnell’s orders. That same day, Nov. 10, in a related case filed in Massachusetts (Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. USDA), a federal district court judge issued a temporary restraining order staying the USDA’s November 8 memorandum to states (essentially, temporarily freezing enforcement of the notice that directed states to “undo” any actions taken to issue full November SNAP benefits).
On Tuesday, Nov. 11, the Supreme Court extended the prior stay of Judge McConnell’s orders until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 13. The Supreme Court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a reason for extending the stay for two more days, but it is possible the Court may have intended to give Congress an opportunity to resolve the shutdown and reopen the government this week, which would fully fund SNAP benefits.
Where do things stand now? States are in limbo. As of Nov. 6, the USDA has been ordered to pay out full SNAP benefits to states, but the enforcement of that order is still on hold (stayed) until 11:59 on Thursday, Nov. 13. Some states (see map here from Newsweek) have already paid out full SNAP benefits anyway. The USDA has directed states to “undo” those full payments and warned of possible financial consequences for states that fail to do so. For now, however, the enforcement of that Nov. 8 USDA memorandum is subject to a temporary restraining order. Other states, like North Carolina, have only paid out partial SNAP benefits and are awaiting full funding from the federal government to pay out full SNAP benefits to eligible households. Meanwhile, on Monday, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to end the government shutdown, which has now been sent to the U.S. House for a vote. The House is reconvening today for the first time since Sept. 19 and is expected to vote this evening on the Senate’s bill to reopen the government. The Senate bill would fully fund SNAP through Sept. 30, 2026.
Even if Congress ends the government shutdown and fully funds SNAP for the fiscal year, eligibility changes from H.R. 1 mean that some North Carolina households who previously qualified for SNAP will no longer be eligible to receive SNAP benefits as of November 1. You can read more about those changes in my prior post.
