Donald Trump’s SNAP Cuts: Lawsuits, Shutdown, and Lost Benefits

President Donald Trump’s SNAP cuts, enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed on July 4, 2025, are the largest reduction in the food stamp program’s history: nearly $187 billion in federal spending through 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.¹ By early 2026, more than 3.5 million people had already lost access to food assistance, and the CBO projects roughly 4 million will lose all or a substantial portion of their benefits in a typical month once every provision takes effect.²

The law passed the Senate 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker, and the House 218-214 along party lines.³ It rewrote SNAP along four main lines: who has to work to keep benefits, which immigrants can receive them, how much states must pay, and how future benefit levels are set.

Expanded Work Requirements for Adults up to 64

Before the law, adults 18 to 54 without dependents had to work at least 20 hours a week to receive SNAP for more than three months in any three-year period. The new law pushed that age ceiling to 64, sweeping in roughly a decade’s worth of older adults previously exempt.⁴ It also eliminated automatic exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young adults who had aged out of foster care.⁵ Parents whose youngest child is 14 or older now have to meet the requirement too, down from a previous threshold of 18.⁶

To keep benefits, you must document at least 80 hours per month of work, approved education, job training, or some combination. Miss the threshold without an exemption, and you’re capped at three months of benefits every three years.⁷ The CBO projected the work-rule changes alone would drop 2.4 million people from the rolls in a typical month.⁴

Exemptions still exist for pregnant individuals, people receiving disability benefits, those caring for an incapacitated person, and Native Americans meeting federal criteria under the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. States can also issue limited waivers where the unemployment rate tops 10%.⁶

New Immigration Restrictions on Eligibility

The law ended SNAP eligibility for refugees, asylum seekers, and survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Eligibility was narrowed to U.S. citizens, green card holders, certain immigrants from Cuba and Haiti, and immigrants from the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau.⁸ The CBO estimated this provision alone would strip benefits from between 120,000 and 250,000 people with lawful immigration status, including roughly 50,000 children.⁹

Reporting from Arizona, which has seen the sharpest drop in SNAP participation in the country, found that green card holders who remained legally eligible were being improperly cut off, with denial notices citing “immigration status” even for people who still qualified. Fear of broader federal immigration enforcement has also deterred eligible families from applying, despite no change to the “public charge” rule for non-cash benefits.⁸

States Now Have to Pay for Benefits

For decades, the federal government fully funded SNAP benefits themselves. That ends in October 2027. States with a payment error rate of 6% or higher must pay a share of benefit costs on a sliding scale: 5% for error rates between 6% and 8%, 10% for rates between 8% and 10%, and 15% for rates above 10%.¹⁰

Federal reimbursement for state SNAP administrative costs was also cut from 50% to 25%, effective October 2026. Combined, the new obligations could cost states up to $15 billion a year once fully in effect.¹¹ States with especially high error rates, including Alaska, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and the District of Columbia, may postpone the cost share until fiscal year 2029.¹⁰

Missouri, with an 8.7% error rate, faces a potential $150 million annual liability. Maryland estimates up to $240 million per year in benefit costs alone. Rhode Island projects the new obligations could add over $60 million to its structural deficit.¹¹ A survey by the American Public Human Services Association found more than a quarter of responding states were considering narrower eligibility to cut costs ahead of the 2027 deadline, and four indicated they could consider withdrawing from SNAP entirely.¹⁰

Future Benefit Levels Are Capped

The law froze future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan, the formula used to calculate SNAP benefit amounts. Any future reevaluations must be “cost neutral,” and the requirement to reevaluate every five years was eliminated. In practice, that caps future benefit increases at the rate of consumer price inflation.³

Where People Are Losing Benefits

Between the law’s enactment in July 2025 and early 2026, SNAP participation dropped by more than 3.5 million people, roughly 8 to 9%. Every state lost participants; 36 states saw declines of 5% or more. The national unemployment rate held steady near 4% throughout, indicating the drops were driven by policy rather than economic recovery.²

Arizona experienced the steepest decline, with participation falling between 42% and 51% depending on the data source, or roughly 400,000 people.¹ Georgia’s rolls fell 24%, Louisiana’s dropped 20%, and Tennessee and Virginia each saw declines between 12% and 16%.² California projected 55,000 to 60,000 monthly losses starting in October 2026, and New York expected 300,000 to 400,000 residents to be affected by the work requirements.

The 2025 Shutdown and the Fight Over November Benefits

Separate from the budget law, SNAP became the center of a crisis during a 43-day government shutdown that ran from October 1 through November 12, 2025.¹² In late October, the Trump administration announced it could not deliver November SNAP benefits. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said full payments could not be made during a shutdown. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called that claim “unequivocally false,” pointing to billions in contingency reserves and to legal transfer authority the administration had previously used for the WIC program.¹³

On October 31, 2025, two federal judges intervened. In Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani ruled the administration’s plan to halt benefits was “erroneous” and ordered the use of $5 to $6 billion in contingency reserves. In Rhode Island, Judge John McConnell granted a temporary restraining order, finding the decision to stop payments violated federal administrative and spending law.¹⁴

The administration initially covered only half to two-thirds of normal allotments. Judge McConnell then ordered full SNAP funding by November 7, 2025, directing the USDA to tap Section 32 child nutrition funds as well, and noted President Trump’s own social media posts about the delay showed an “intent to defy a court order.” Vice President Vance called the order “absurd.”¹⁵ The administration appealed to the First Circuit and then the Supreme Court, where Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a temporary administrative stay while noting she personally would have denied the extension.¹⁶ The fight became moot on November 12, 2025, when Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026, ending the shutdown and funding SNAP through the fiscal year.¹²

Court Rulings That Have Slowed or Blocked Pieces of the Agenda

Several administration actions on SNAP have been blocked or narrowed in court.

Recipient Data Demand

In early 2025, the USDA began demanding that states hand over detailed SNAP recipient data, including names and immigration statuses, citing figures that suggested 186,000 deceased individuals and 500,000 duplicate recipients were on the rolls.¹⁷ Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia sued. In September 2025, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney issued a temporary restraining order, followed by a preliminary injunction in October 2025.¹⁸ Despite the order, the administration said in December 2025 it would begin withholding administrative funds from 21 non-compliant states, most led by Democrats.¹⁹

Noncitizen Eligibility Guidance

On October 31, 2025, the USDA issued guidance declaring certain noncitizens who had obtained lawful permanent resident status through refugee or asylee pathways were ineligible for SNAP. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Oregon on November 26, 2025, arguing the guidance misread the law and gave states almost no time to comply, with a 120-day grace period the states said had expired one day after the memo was released.²⁰ A judge later extended the hold-harmless implementation period for those provisions until April 9, 2026, for the plaintiff states.²¹

Food Restrictions Struck Down

The USDA had approved waivers letting states bar SNAP recipients from buying soft drinks and certain processed foods. Five recipients from Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia challenged the approvals in Aragon v. Rollins.²² On June 22, 2026, Judge Amy Berman Jackson granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs, ruling that the USDA had exceeded its authority under the Food and Nutrition Act and bypassed required public notice procedures. The pilot projects in all five states cannot proceed.²³ Secretary Rollins said the administration would “keep fighting to Make America Healthy Again.”²⁴

Funding Tied to Political Compliance

In March 2026, twenty states and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Massachusetts over a USDA plan conditioning food assistance funding, including SNAP and school lunch programs, on state compliance with administration policies on gender, immigration, and women’s sports. On June 5, 2026, Judge Myong Joun granted a preliminary injunction blocking the conditions, which the plaintiffs said amounted to $74 billion in leverage over states.²⁵

What Comes Next

Two dates are worth watching. In October 2026, federal reimbursement for state SNAP administrative costs drops from 50% to 25%.¹¹ In October 2027, states with elevated payment error rates begin paying a share of benefit costs. Based on 2024 error rates, roughly half of all states would face new annual costs above $100 million. A bipartisan coalition of state and local government groups has asked Congress to delay both the cost share and the administrative funding cut.²⁶ Whether Congress acts will determine how much of the law’s projected 4 million-person impact actually lands.

1
CNBC. SNAP Food Stamps Big Beautiful Bill
2
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance
3
Feeding America Action. Analysis of Final Budget Reconciliation Legislation
4
CNBC. Medicaid SNAP Work Requirements Retirement
5
Signal Cleveland. SNAP Changes Work Requirements One Big Beautiful Bill
6
Axios. SNAP Work Requirements Trump OBBBA
7
USA Today. New SNAP Work Requirements Effective June 2026
8
Cronkite News. Immigrants Food Stamp Cuts
9
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. House Reconciliation Bill Proposes Deepest SNAP Cut in History
10
ABC News. Dozens of States Face New Costs for High Error Rates
11
Pew. As SNAP Changes Shift Food Assistance Costs, States Face New Choices
12
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Government Shutdowns Q&A
13
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Trump Administration Is Legally Required to Provide SNAP in Shutdown
14
Government Executive. Trump Administration Blocked From Cutting SNAP Benefits
15
NBC News. Judge Orders Trump Administration to Deliver Full SNAP Benefits
16
SCOTUSblog. Trump Administration Again Asks Supreme Court to Block Order Requiring Full SNAP Payments
17
PBS NewsHour. Trump Administration Says It Will Withhold SNAP From States Led by Democrats
18
NPR. SNAP Privacy USDA Lawsuit
19
NBC News. Trump Administration Threatens to Withhold SNAP Benefits From Blue States
20
Courthouse News. States Sue to Block New Limits on SNAP Access for Immigrants
21
National Conference of State Legislatures. How States Are Responding to New SNAP Requirements
22
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Aragon v. Rollins
23
Food Research and Action Center. Federal Court Strikes Down USDA Approval of SNAP Food Restriction Demonstrations
24
Iowa Hunger Coalition. Federal Court Blocks Iowa’s SNAP Food Restrictions
25
Los Angeles Times. Judge Halts Trump Plan to Link USDA SNAP Funds to Gender, Immigration
26
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Congressional Delay of SNAP Cost Shift Urgently Needed to Protect Food Assistance