Ketanji Brown Jackson’s “WTF” SNAP Decision, Explained

It looks like she helped Trump’s team. In reality, she was boxing in the conservative majority.

In his latest piece, Steve Vladeck breaks down one of those “wait—what?” Supreme Court moments that makes everyone’s head spin. The question: why did Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, of all people, side with the Trump administration in the latest fight over SNAP (food stamps)?

Here’s the short version. Because of the recent government shutdown, Congress didn’t appropriate new funds for SNAP. That left 42 million Americans—one in eight—at risk of missing November benefits. A lower court ordered the administration to pay out anyway. The Trump team appealed and lost in the First Circuit, so they ran to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay. That landed on Jackson’s desk.

Now here’s where Vladeck’s analysis really matters. (Read his full breakdown here.) Jackson didn’t side with Trump because she agreed with their argument. She did it because procedurally, the system left her with two bad choices. If she did nothing, the full Court—the conservative majority—would likely have jumped in with an open-ended stay, freezing SNAP indefinitely. Instead, she issued a short “administrative stay” that expires 48 hours after the First Circuit rules. That forces both the appeals court and the Supreme Court to move fast rather than leaving poor families in limbo.

It’s not a political decision. It’s a process decision—a way for Jackson to maintain some institutional control and prevent a worse outcome. As Vladeck puts it, she took the least-bad option in a legal mess created by Congress’s failure to fund basic nutrition programs during a shutdown.

If you want to dive deeper into the legal reasoning, the timeline, and why this case could shape how emergency stays work in the future, check out Steve Vladeck’s full article “190. SNAP WTF?”.