The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration's emergency request to temporarily suspend an appeals court injunction requiring the administration to fully fund the food assistance program (SNAP) during the government shutdown.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, The court in charge of reviewing emergency appeals to the Supreme Court in Washington issued an “administrative stay,” which, for now, halts compliance with an order issued by a lower court in Rhode Island. That order required the transfer of $4 billion by the end of the day to ensure full food assistance payments for more than 40 million Americans during the month of November. The temporary decision gives the appeals court additional time to study the case, which pits the federal government against food security advocacy groups. The measure leaves some 40 million beneficiaries who depend on the program to cover their basic needs in uncertainty. The Department of Agriculture had previously announced that, while the legal dispute continued, it would use contingency funds to provide partial payments to households enrolled in SNAP. Subsequently, on Friday, the Department of Agriculture assured that full SNAP benefits for the month of November would be paid, while a The Court of Appeals ruling upheld a lower court's decision ordering this to be done. The case has become one of the main legal battlegrounds of the current government shutdown, the longest in the country's history, which has affected the funding of several social programs and the regular work of many federal agencies. The outright suspension of food aid distribution comes after the Trump administration, through the Justice Department, filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to overturn the previous court order.under the principle that they cannot spend funds until Congress has allocated them.