US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has temporarily blocked a lower court order that required the Trump administration to release full food assistance payments for November.
Jackson issued a brief order on Friday night, pausing the directive to give an appeals court time to review the case.
Earlier in the day, the Trump administration said it was preparing to release the funds in line with the lower court ruling.
The money is part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme (SNAP), which helps about 42 million Americans — including children, older adults, and people with disabilities — buy food.
The dispute comes as the government shutdown continues to stall critical payments, leaving families anxious about how they will cover basic groceries.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the administration to release the full amount, warning that withholding aid would cause "irreparable harm" to millions of people.
He also criticised officials for delaying payments, calling their decision "arbitrary and capricious."
“Arbitrary and capricious”
The previous ruling, issued by US District Judge John McConnell on Thursday, had come in response to a lawsuit filed by Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group that accused the administration of unlawfully delaying benefits.
Democracy Forward sued the Department of Agriculture last month after the agency announced that November SNAP payments would not be distributed as long as the government remained closed.
The group argued that the decision was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Facing legal pressure, the Trump administration said it would provide partial payments by using $4.65 billion in contingency funds, covering about 65 percent of regular benefits.
It declined, however, to draw on additional reserves intended for child nutrition programmes. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said those partial payments could take several weeks to reach states.
