Staff Reports
A federal judge has stepped in and stopped the Biden administration’s successor from letting states bar Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from buying so‑called “junk” food with their benefits. In a clear ruling in Aragon v. Rollins, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins went beyond what the law allows when she approved state food‑restriction waivers for Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.
What the court actually held
Judge Jackson granted summary judgment for five SNAP recipients and vacated the USDA approvals for the state pilot projects. The opinion says the agency did more than tweak paperwork — it “purport[ed] to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress.” In short: the USDA, acting through Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, tried to rewrite the statute instead of following it.
Why this ruling matters for SNAP recipients and retailers
Practically speaking, the decision pauses state experiments that would have made benefit rules different at every checkout lane. SNAP recipients in the five named states keep the same scope of purchases they had before. It also spares grocers and checkout systems from a maddening patchwork of state‑by‑state rules that would have been costly and confusing to implement. Plaintiffs said the waivers were confusing and stigmatizing — the court agreed that the agency’s shortcut wasn’t the right way to fix those problems.
Agency overreach, public‑health posturing, and the real fix
There are two ways to read the episode. One is constitutional: an agency must not invent law by approving waivers that change statutory definitions. The other is political: yes, some well‑meaning public‑health voices backed these bans, but policy of this breadth belongs in Congress or state legislatures — not tucked into waiver memos from a federal agency. If policymakers want to limit purchases, they should pass clear laws, not play bureaucratic hardball with hungry Americans’ benefits.
What’s next
The USDA will likely appeal to the D.C. Circuit and could seek a stay while the appeal runs. If the appellate courts reverse, the waiver experiments could resume; if they affirm, the ruling will reset the limits of what agencies can do under the Administrative Procedure Act. Either way, the real winners would be clearer law and fewer surprises at the grocery checkout. Congress should take this moment to write sensible, transparent rules rather than let agencies rewrite the meaning of “food” on a whim.
