Editor’s note: This story was updated on Sunday at 4:22 p.m. to include a statement from Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
After the Trump administration told states to “immediately undo” steps taken to provide full food stamp benefits to families on Saturday night, Gov. Maura Healey said state officials would continue to make sure full benefits were distributed.
“If President Trump wants to penalize states for preventing Americans from going hungry, we will see him in court,” Healey said Sunday afternoon. “Massachusetts residents with funds on their cards should continue to spend it on food.”
Healey said that the funds were processed in accordance with guidance state officials received from the Trump administration and a lower court order.
She added that the steps were taken before the Supreme Court order on Friday night that granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to hold off on payments until the appeals court could weigh in.
“We will continue to work with Attorney General Campbell to make sure everyone gets the full benefits they are owed. President Trump should be focusing on reopening the government that he controls instead of repeatedly fighting to take away food from American families,” Healey said.
Campbell’s office also issued a statement on Sunday about the Trump administration’s attempts to claw back SNAP benefits.
“Now that Massachusetts has issued full benefits — something the federal government should have done in the first place — the President is trying to claw back those resources from children, elderly, veterans, and people with disabilities who desperately need them. My office will not let this administration continue to use Massachusetts residents’ lives as a political bargaining chip. This chaos and confusion must stop,” Campbell said.
A memo by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Saturday night ordered states to provide 65 percent of the maximum benefit allotments and called attempts by states to send full benefit payments for November “unauthorized.”
The memo threatened to impose financial penalties on states that did not “comply” quickly with the government’s new orders, the latest in a series of legal battles over the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), thrown into uncertainty due to the extended federal government shutdown.
Series of legal battles
On Friday, Healey’s office said that she’d ordered SNAP recipients to receive full November benefits after a federal judge ordered the federal government to make the funds available.
Some states began issuing full monthly SNAP benefits to people, a day after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide the funds.
But Friday night, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily paused that judicial order to give an appeals court in Boston time to decide whether to issue a more lasting halt. Jackson acted because she handles emergency matters from Massachusetts.
The high court’s order didn’t stop payment distribution in at least some states, but millions of other Americans who depend on SNAP remain in limbo.
About 1.1 million Bay State residents depend on the food assistance program. Nearly a third are children, Healey said last month.
In Massachusetts, 32% of SNAP recipients are children, 31% are people with disabilities and 26% are senior citizens, according to the Healey administration.
Nationally, about 1 in 8 Americans depend on SNAP benefits to spend at grocery stores and farmers’ markets.
What has been holding up November benefits?
Because of the federal government shutdown, the Trump administration originally had said SNAP benefits would not be available in November. After two judges ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely, the administration said it would use an emergency reserve fund containing more than $4.6 billion to provide partial benefits in November.
A judge on Thursday said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered other funds to be used to make the full monthly payment. The Trump administration appealed, asking a higher court to suspend any orders that require it to spend more money than is available in the contingency fund. That is what led to Jackson’s temporary hold issued late Friday.
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