The Donald Trump administration cannot suspend food aid benefits amid the ongoing government shutdown, two federal judges ruled on Friday. They said that the government must use contingency funds to keep paying for the benefits.
The rulings by judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, issued within minutes of each other, came as two lawsuits sought to block the U.S. Department of Agriculture from suspending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, starting November 1. The judges who issued the rulings are John McConnell in Providence and Indira Talwani in Boston.
Who is Judge John McConnell?
Judge John McConnell was born in 1958 in Providence, Rhode Island. He's a judge at the United States District Court of Rhode Island. McConnell was nominated by former US President Barack Obama on January 5, 2011. He was confirmed by the Senate on May 4, 2011. McConnell got his commission on May 6, 2011 and has been serving as chief judge since 2019.
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{{/usCountry}}McConnell was educated at Brown University and Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He was a law clerk for Donald F. Shea at the Supreme Court of Rhode Island between 1983-1984 and had a private practice in Providence from 1984-2011.
Ruling on the SNAP benefits suspension, he said, “There is no doubt and it is beyond argument that irreparable harm will begin to occur if it hasn't already occurred in the terror it has caused some people about the availability of funding for food, for their family.”
Who is Judge Indira Talwani?
Judge Indira Talwani is a judge of the U. S. District Court of Massachusetts. She too was nominated by Obama on September 24, 2013, after the seat was vacated by Mark L. Wolf. Talwani was confirmed by the Senate on May 8, 2014 and got commission on May 12, 2014.
She's studied at Harvard and Radcliffe College. Talwani got her law degree from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She is the daughter of Manik Talwani, a known geophysicist from Punjab, India.
The USDA said it was suspending SNAP benefits citing insufficient funds to pay full benefits to 42 million low-income Americans. They said it costs $8.5 billion to $9 billion per month. As per the Trump administration the agency does not have the authority to pay them until Congress passes a spending bill ending a government shutdown that has been continuing since October 1.
However, plaintiffs in the Boston case argued there was other funding including $5.25 billion in contingency funds that Congress previously provided the USDA for use when “necessary to carry out program operations”.
Apart from this, the plaintiffs also argued that a separate fund with around $23 billion in it could also be utilized to avoid what would be an unprecedented suspension of SNAP benefits.
(With Reuters inputs)