SNAP penalties blocked after states miss retroactive deadline

A federal judge sided with 22 states and Washington, D.C., ruling the Trump administration's USDA unlawfully started a 120-day compliance countdown for new SNAP rules before telling anyone how to comply. The rules, part of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ narrowed noncitizen eligibility and penalize states for high error rates, with North Carolina facing up to $420 million a year by 2028 if it can't hit the new bar.

USDA didn't announce its interpretation of when the clock started until late August, and didn't release guidance on the noncitizen rules until October 31, one day before the period it claimed had already begun. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai found the agency had changed its own longstanding practice without explanation and called the result an impossible situation for states trying to comply.

A second part of the same guidance also drew a rebuke: USDA's eligibility charts omitted refugees, asylees, and certain Afghan and Ukrainian parolees from lists the court found they actually qualify for. Kasubhai's ruling makes permanent the injunction he issued in December, and USDA did not respond to a request for comment.

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