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ketanji brown jackson
With Food Banks in 'Disaster Response Mode,' Supreme Court Lets Trump Pause SNAP Funds
"This is insane," said US Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Trump is jumping through hoops to block SNAP."
Nov 08, 2025
The US Supreme Court late Friday temporarily blocked a lower court order that required the Trump administration to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as the government shutdown drags on with no end in sight.
One wrinkle in the case is that the Supreme Court order, which came after the Trump administration appealed the lower court directive, was handed down by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her brief order came after the Massachusetts-based US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit opted not to swiftly intervene in the case.
Jackson, who is tasked with handling emergency issues from the 1st Circuit, wrote that her administrative stay in the case will end 48 hours after the appeals court issues a ruling in the case.
The justice's order came after states across the US had already begun distributing SNAP benefits after a district court judge directed the Trump administration to release billions of dollars in funds by Friday.
"Some people woke up Friday with the money already on the debit-like EBT cards they use to buy groceries," NPR reported.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote Friday that "it may surprise folks that Justice Jackson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the court's behavior on emergency applications from the Trump administration, acquiesced in even a temporary pause of the district court's ruling in this case."
He continued:
But as I read the order, which says a lot more than a typical “administrative stay” from the Court, Jackson was stuck between a rock and a hard place—given the incredibly compressed timing that was created by the circumstances of the case.
In a world in which Justice Jackson either knew or suspected that at least five of the justices would grant temporary relief to the Trump administration if she didn’t, the way she structured the stay means that she was able to try to control the timing of the Supreme Court’s (forthcoming) review—and to create pressure for it to happen faster than it otherwise might have. In other words, it’s a compromise—one with which not everyone will agree, but which strikes me as eminently defensible under these unique (and, let’s be clear, maddening and entirely f-ing avoidable) circumstances.
The Trump administration has fought tooth and nail to flout its legal obligation to distribute SNAP funds during the shutdown as low-income Americans grow increasingly desperate and food bank demand skyrockets.
"This is insane," US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote after the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. "Trump is jumping through hoops to block SNAP. Follow the law, fund SNAP, and feed American families."
Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts—one of the states that quickly moved to process SNAP benefits following the district court order—said in a statement that "Trump should never have put the American people in this position."
"Families shouldn’t have had to go hungry because their president chose to put politics over their lives," said Healey.
Feeding America, a nonprofit network of hundreds of food banks across the US, said Friday that food banks bought nearly 325% more food through the organization's grocery purchase program during the week of October 27 than they did at the same time last year.
Donations to food banks, which were underresourced even prior to the shutdown, have also skyrocketed. The head of a Houston food bank said the organization is in "disaster response mode."
"Across the country, communities are feeling the real, human impact the shutdown is having on their neighbors and communities,” said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer at Feeding America. "Families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities are showing strength through the hardship, and their communities are standing beside them—giving their time and money, and advocating so no one faces hunger alone.”
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Supreme Court Allows Trump to Impose Anti-Trans Passport Policy
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said a lawyer for the ACLU.
Nov 06, 2025
The US Supreme Court issued an emergency order Thursday upholding President Donald Trump's discriminatory policy barring transgender and nonbinary Americans from changing the gender listed on their passports from the gender assigned to them at birth.
Reversing a lower court decision blocking the policy in June, the six conservative justices assessed in an unsigned majority opinion that by requiring passports to reflect a person's sex at birth, the State Department "is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, which was joined by the two other liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor. Lamenting the Trump administration's "routine" reliance on the court to issue emergency rulings, Brown wrote that she would have denied the request, because “the documented real-world harms to these plaintiffs obviously outweigh the government’s unexplained (and inexplicable) interest in immediate implementation of the passport policy.”
Last month, a group of transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, requested that the court reject the Trump administration's petition for a stay on the lower court's ruling blocking the policy. That ruling had come after transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs testified that they were afraid to submit passport applications to the government as a result of the policy.
"Forcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence and adds to the considerable barriers they already face in securing freedom, safety, and acceptance," said Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
The attorneys argued last month before the Supreme Court that the policy "irrationally undermines the very purpose of passports—identifying a US citizen when they travel” and also is “motivated by anti-transgender animus.”
That animus has been on display since Trump's first day in office this term, when he signed an executive order declaring that his administration would only recognize “two sexes, male and female," based on one's “biological classification” at birth.
The passport policy has already led to confusion, which the actress Hunter Schafer—a transgender woman—put on display in February, when she was issued a passport that identified her as male in conflict with both her appearance and other legal documents like her driver's license.
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, following the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday. “The Trump administration's policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
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With Its Birthright Non-Decision, the Supreme Court Chickened Out and Left a Mess Behind
Barrett and the conservative majority produced a complicated and confusing procedural ruling that leaves the executive order in legal limbo.
Jul 10, 2025
Just how bad is the Supreme Court’s June 27 decision on birthright citizenship? Among progressive and liberal commentators, the thinking is surprisingly mixed. Some assert that Trump v. CASA “couldn’t be more disastrous” and will leave the Trump administration with “blood on its hands”; others see “silver linings” in the ruling.
The reason for the diverse reactions is simple: The 6-3 majority decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t address the underlying issue in the case—the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of undocumented immigrants. Instead, Barrett and the conservative majority produced a complicated and confusing procedural ruling that leaves the executive order in legal limbo, intact for now but subject to further litigation.
As I have written before, Trump’s birthright order defies the plain text of the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment. Known as the “Citizenship Clause,” the sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Had Barrett and her confederates not ducked the underlying issue of the executive order’s constitutionality, they would have been forced either to rewrite the Citizenship Clause to uphold the order—a step even they apparently are not yet prepared to take—or invalidate a centerpiece of the MAGA mass deportation agenda.
The executive order stunningly disregards these easily understood words, proclaiming that the amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” but was adopted only to repudiate the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to Black Americans.
But while repudiating Dred Scott was the immediate impetus for crafting the Citizenship Clause, the Senate and the House debates in 1866 extended far beyond that notorious decision.
The clause was introduced in the Senate by Jacob Howard of Michigan on May 30, 1866, as an add-on to the draft of the 14th Amendment formulated by the House. The clause tracked similar language contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and followed the general principles of English common law and the ancient doctrine of jus solis (the “law of the soil’’)—the principle that all those born within the geographic boundaries of a nation are citizens at birth. (More than 30 countries today recognize the doctrine, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Great Britain modified its nationality law in 1981.)
In his introductory remarks, Howard noted the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant that the citizenship clause would not apply to the children of ambassadors or foreign ministers, the children of occupying foreign soldiers, or to the offspring of Native Americans who claimed allegiance to tribal governments, but that the clause would “include every other class of person,” regardless of race or descent. (Native Americans were accorded citizenship by legislation passed in 1924.)
The citizenship clause, Howard said, “settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.”
Trump’s executive order also contradicts the court’s precedent opinions dating back to the landmark 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognized the citizenship of a man born in the U.S. to parents who at the time were subjects of the Chinese Emperor but domiciled in California. That case and other later decisions demonstrate the inclusive nature of the Citizenship Clause.
Had Barrett and her confederates not ducked the underlying issue of the executive order’s constitutionality, they would have been forced either to rewrite the Citizenship Clause to uphold the order—a step even they apparently are not yet prepared to take—or invalidate a centerpiece of the MAGA mass deportation agenda.
In the end, they chose to do neither.
But they still managed to hand Trump the next best thing to a total victory. Barrett’s ruling granted the administration’s request for a “partial stay” (or pause) on three nationwide preliminary injunctions that had been issued by three federal district court judges—which blocked the birthright order from taking effect anywhere in the country—and sent the cases back to the district judges for further consideration to weed through and apply the jurisprudential mess that Barrett left behind.
In a tortured analysis that New York Magazine’s Chas Danner called “an originalist fever dream,” Barrett limited the court’s review to the sole question of whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have the authority to issue nationwide, or “universal,” injunctions. The act was one of the first laws passed by Congress after the ratification of the Constitution, and in modified form remains on the books in Title 28 of the United States Code. And as Barrett noted, it is the Judiciary Act that has endowed federal courts with jurisdiction over “all suits… in equity,” and that “still today… authorizes the federal courts to issue equitable remedies,” such as injunctions.
As an originalist, Barrett interprets the Constitution and federal statutes rigidly according to their text and their “original public meaning,” discounting evolving legal norms and practices as well as contemporary social values and needs. When it comes to universal injunctions, however, originalists have a problem. No federal statute, including the Judiciary Act, explicitly authorizes judges to issue nationwide injunctions, but no statute prohibits them from doing so.
In the absence of any guidance from the 1789 act, Barrett and the majority revved up their originalist wayback machine to examine how the English High Court of Chancery operated at the time of the founding, asking if that court issued forms of equitable relief analogous to contemporary universal injunctions. “The answer,” she wrote, “is no.” Equitable remedies at the time of the founding, she concluded, could provide “complete relief between the parties” to a lawsuit, but “complete relief is not synonymous with universal relief” that applies throughout an entire country.
But then, in another confusing twist, Barrett offered the aforementioned silver linings, writing that legal challenges to Trump’s birthright order might proceed under the Administrative Procedures Act, or as class actions, or in lawsuits brought by individual states seeking relief on behalf of their own residents, which 22 states to date have joined. Barrett left it to the district courts to determine which of these alternative legal avenues might suffice, and she gave them 30 days to do so before the executive order takes effect.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor charged that Barrett’s opinion “kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies” and that “newborns subject to the Citizenship Order will face the gravest harms imaginable,” jeopardizing their “chance to participate in American society… unless their parents have sufficient resources to file individual suits.”
In another scathing dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted Barrett’s opinion “as an existential threat to the rule of law.”
Trump, by contrast, hailed the court’s decision, boasting that it will unblock other items on his political agenda that have been stymied by district court injunctions.
In the meantime, attorneys in the CASA case have amended their complaint to proceed as a class action, and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has expressed confidence that broad injunctions stopping Trump’s executive order can still be enforced in lawsuits filed by state governments.
Whether the new legal maneuvers succeed remains to be seen. None would be necessary if the Supreme Court had stood up to Trump and done its job in the first place.
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