Suits end; $1B more a month for food

The Biden administration has abandoned the Trump administration’s opposition to emergency nutrition assistance going to the lowest-income households already at the maximum benefit levels.

In two lawsuits in Pennsylvania and California, plaintiffs argued that then-President Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, misinterpreted a section of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act in a way that denied millions of the neediest Americans access to emergency allotments of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the program formerly called food stamps. In Pennsylvania, the suit alleged that the U.S. Department of Agriculture under Trump denied any emergency allotments to nearly 40% of the state’s SNAP households.

President Joe Biden’s agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, moved Thursday for voluntary dismissal of the agency’s appeal in these cases, entering into a settlement that will provide $1 billion per month in additional food assistance to an estimated 25 million people in very low-income American households.

Starting this month, households that had not received at least $95 per month in increased benefits through emergency allotments during the pandemic — because they were already at or close to receiving the current maximum benefit — will now be eligible to receive additional benefits. Benefit levels will remain unchanged for households that have been receiving increased payments of at least $95 per month.

States may need a few weeks to update their systems and get the additional benefits to participants, “but it should be smooth sailing from here on out,” said Stacy Dean, deputy undersecretary of USDA.

“We’ve seen the food insecurity numbers through the Census Pulse data and knew we needed to do everything we could for the truly struggling low-income households,” Dean said.

Biden signed an executive order shortly after taking office in January ordering the agency to reconsider the emergency allotments. Later that month, Vilsack began to focus on the issue.

“The emergency SNAP increases authorized by Congress last year were not being distributed equitably, and the poorest households — who have the least ability to absorb the economic shocks brought about by COVID — received little to no emergency benefit increases,” Vilsack said in a statement Thursday. “As part of President Biden’s commitment to deliver economic relief and ensure every family can afford to put food on the table, today’s actions will provide much-needed support for those who need it most.”

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act authorized emergency allotments to SNAP households to help address temporary food needs during the pandemic.

Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the act, if a recipient was already receiving the maximum SNAP benefit, he or she was not eligible for the additional Families First act’s emergency benefit. But Judge John Milton Younge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in September that the administration was ignoring the intent of the law.

The USDA continued to resist, telling Pennsylvania officials they would not respond to their request for additional benefits and filing a motion for the court to clarify its order.

In October, Younge called out the Trump administration’s USDA for “egregious disobedience” that “flouts this court’s basic authority to preserve order and administer justice.”

USDA settled the Pennsylvania and California lawsuits Thursday afternoon.