Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced today that a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon has sided with her and 21 other attorneys general, permanently blocking the Trump Administration from penalizing states with steep fines over their administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The ruling makes permanent a preliminary injunction the court issued in December 2025 and goes further: the judge sided with Delaware and the coalition on every claim, striking down both the Administration’s fine-triggering deadline and its guidance restricting food assistance for lawful permanent residents.
“This entire ordeal was a blatant attempt by the Trump Administration to take food away from families in need, to destroy a plank of the social safety net, and to degrade our state’s financial standing,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “I’m proud to say that we made sure they failed on every count.”
In November 2025, Attorney General Jennings and a coalition of 21 other attorneys general and the District of Columbia sued the Trump Administration after it moved to cut off SNAP benefits for tens of thousands of lawful permanent residents and set a retroactive deadline that put states at risk of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.
The Administration later reversed its position on eligibility for lawful permanent residents but continued to argue that states owed fines for missing a “grace period” that, in practice, had already expired before the Administration finished issuing guidance on the changes.
The court found that the Administration’s deadline was unlawful and arbitrary, and that the Administration’s guidance improperly excluded certain lawful permanent residents, including former refugees and people granted asylum, from food assistance they are legally entitled to receive. In addition, the court found that the Administration’s deadline was unlawful as it related to other changes to SNAP eligibility calculations from the 2025 Republican budget bill.
The decision makes it clear that:
• States cannot be penalized under the unlawful deadline the Administration tried to impose.
• The standard five-year waiting period for SNAP does not apply to lawful permanent residents who were previously refugees, asylees, or other humanitarian immigrants.