Two federal judges ruled Friday that the Trump administration is required to use contingency funds to keep the nation’s biggest food aid program running during the government shutdown.

The judges’ decisions were celebrated by state officials and anti-hunger advocates in Maine, though questions remain about whether the administration will comply with the order and whether there still might be disruptions in November’s benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The program serves one in eight Americans, or roughly 42 million people, including 170,000 Mainers.

A federal judge in Boston said the administration has until Monday to determine whether it will fully or partially fund November food stamp benefits but that it may not suspend them altogether. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani stopped short — for now — of issuing the restraining order that 25 states, including Maine, sought in their lawsuit.

In a memo Friday, Talwani said the states’ motion for a temporary restraining order remains under advisement as she waits for the government to notify her about whether it will distribute reduced benefits. The absence of SNAP payments will “undoubtedly result in substantial harm” to recipients, but that harm may still be avoided, she wrote.

SNAP Ruling by Maine Trust For Local News

“Defendants’ suspension of SNAP payments was based on the erroneous conclusion that the Contingency Funds could not be used to ensure continuation of SNAP payments,” Talwani wrote. “This court has now clarified that Defendants are required to use those Contingency Funds as necessary for the SNAP program.”

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey this week joined the federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Frey and other officials from Maine, including Gov. Janet Mills, applauded the rulings Friday but said they are still waiting to see how the administration will respond.

“Withholding this contingency funding was a wrong and callous decision by the USDA to begin with,” Mills said in a written statement. “I strongly urge the President and USDA to comply with these rulings and immediately release SNAP emergency funds to ensure thousands of Maine people — and millions more across the country — don’t go hungry in November.”

During a hearing Thursday, Talwani seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s argument that SNAP benefits could be suspended for the first time in the program’s six-decade history because of the shutdown. She told lawyers that if the government can’t afford to cover the cost, there’s a process to follow to equitably reduce benefits instead of suspending all of them.

“If you don’t have money, you tighten your belt,” she said in court. “You are not going to make everyone drop dead because it’s a political game someplace.”

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled on Friday in a separate lawsuit that SNAP must be funded using at least one $5 billion pool of contingency funds and asked the administration for an update on its progress by Monday.

Maine is not involved in that lawsuit, which was brought against the federal government by the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, eight cities across the country and several other organizations.

WIDESPREAD IMPACT

The two rulings came a day before the USDA planned to freeze payments to SNAP because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. SNAP costs about $8 billion per month nationally and included more than $29 million in benefits to Maine in September.

SNAP benefits in Maine are typically made available between the 10th and 14th of every month.

The USDA has contended that it doesn’t have the money to continue benefits during the shutdown, but in the lawsuit that Maine joined, the plaintiffs said the USDA has several pools of contingency and appropriated funds it could pull from to either partly or fully fund the November benefits.

The USDA said those contingency funds are not legally available to cover regular benefits. Lawyers for the federal government argued that dispersing the full benefits would violate a law that bars the government from paying for programs without a congressional appropriation.

But Talwani wrote in her Friday memo that because Congress in 2024 appropriated $6 billion for SNAP to be placed in reserve and fund it “as may become necessary to carry out program operations,” then the government is obligated to use that funding to at least partially fund benefits for November.

It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the debit cards that SNAP beneficiaries use to buy groceries could be reloaded after Friday’s rulings. That process often takes one to two weeks.

The government also said that partial payments would require complicated recalculations of benefits, which it says would take weeks. And both rulings are likely to face appeals.

MAINE LEADERS REACT

Mills and other Maine leaders and advocates applauded the judges’ rulings Friday but said they are still waiting to see how the Trump administration will respond.

“It is shameful the Trump administration refused to use funds Congress specifically set aside to keep SNAP benefits flowing during a federal shutdown,” Frey said in a written statement. “We should not have to go to federal court to force the administration to comply with its legal obligations. Unfortunately, it is not the first time we have had to do so, and it likely will not be the last.”

Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, said she was pleased by the decisions, criticizing the administration’s attempts to withhold the contingency funds as “such a political ploy.”

“The idea of using hungry people to get your way in politics is unconscionable,” Pingree said in a phone interview Friday.

But she is also wary of how the administration will respond to the decisions.

“I’m worried that the administration won’t do what the courts tell them,” Pingree said. “That’s our No. 1 problem.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in an email Friday that Collins continues to believe the administration should make the funds available and noted that she is co-sponsoring legislation to ensure SNAP payments continue uninterrupted.

Spokespeople for Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, did not respond Friday to inquiries seeking their reaction to the rulings.

A lapse in SNAP would be “catastrophic,” said Heather Paquette, CEO of Good Shepherd Food Bank.

“We’ve been trying to tell the story of the significant damage we would experience in Maine if SNAP was not funded for November,” she said. “Hearing there may be a reversal to the decision (to withhold funds) is very positive news for food security work in Maine.”

Maine is already seeing an uptick in food insecurity this year, Paquette said, and pantries are reporting a 30%-50% increase in demand.

“The state of Maine is already running to address increased need,” she said. “This was going to be a catastrophic impact on top of that already existing impact.”

Staff Writer Drew Johnson contributed to this report, which also contains reporting from The Associated Press.