The highest court in the United States has extended a previous order allowing President Donald Trump to withhold food assistance to tens of millions of people in the US amid the government shutdown.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended a previous pause that it had granted the Trump administration after a lower court ordered the government to pay out about $4bn in food benefits for November.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Advocates have said that withholding the funds could have calamitous effects on people who depend on food benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), although the issue could be made moot as the shutdown appears to be drawing to a close.

The Supreme Court decision comes one day after the Senate on Monday approved compromise legislation that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, breaking a weeks-long impasse that has disrupted food benefits for millions, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid and snarled air traffic as a lack of air traffic controllers forced cancellations.

The battle over SNAP benefits has underlined the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to slash government employment and roll back access to programmes that it had previously criticised under the auspices of the shutdown.

While it is common for some benefits and programmes to face delays or other issues during government shutdowns, food benefits ceased entirely at the start of November for the first time in the programme’s 60-year history.

The decision set off a series of legal challenges and several weeks of back-and-forth rulings that have kept those who rely on food assistance in a state of limbo.

Advertisement

A judge had ruled last week that the government must fully fund benefits for November, a decision the administration challenged. The Supreme Court had paused that order, but the stay was set to expire on Thursday.