Kansas governor signs onto lawsuit challenging Trump admin over SNAP freeze
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kansas governor joins 25-state suit seeking court order to restore SNAP benefits
- USDA says emergency SNAP funds lack legal status; states argue duty to pay
- Coalition warns benefit cut would harm public health and shift costs to states
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has signed onto a 25-state lawsuit challenging the Trump administration over its claim that federal food assistance benefits cannot be issued while the federal government remains shut down.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Massachusetts, seeks to compel the U.S. Department of Agriculture to keep aid flowing through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
USDA claimed in a memo that $5 billion earmarked by Congress to fund SNAP during emergencies is “not legally available to cover regular benefits.” The agency informed states last week that SNAP benefits would not be issued on Nov. 1.
Roughly one in eight Americans relies on federal food assistance, including nearly 188,000 people in Kansas and more than 650,000 Missouri residents.
“Shutting off SNAP benefits will cause deterioration of public health and well-being,” the lawsuit reads. “Ultimately, the States will bear costs associated with many of these harms.”
Twenty-two Democratic attorneys general signed onto the lawsuit. Kelly was one of three Democratic governors to join the challenge on behalf of states with GOP attorneys general.
“States cannot, and should not, take on the federal government’s responsibility to fund SNAP,” Kelly said in a Tuesday afternoon press release.
“Cutting off SNAP payments is an unprecedented choice made by the Trump Administration and Congress that will harm millions of families across the country,” she added. “I joined this lawsuit to protect Kansans because the federal government has a legal and moral responsibility to fund this program, not to take food out of the mouths of Kansas children.”
Attorney General Kris Kobach has previously argued that only he — not Kelly — has the authority to represent Kansas in court. Kobach’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The issue of SNAP funding does not break down along purely partisan lines.
In a Tuesday guest essay in The New York Times titled “No American Should Go to Bed Hungry,” Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley called SNAP “a lifeline” for needy families and urged his colleagues to pass a bill that would ensure benefits remain intact.
Hawley wrote that allowing SNAP aid to lapse “would introduce an entirely new stage of suffering” to a government shutdown that has already disrupted key services and required hundreds of thousands of federal employees to keep working without pay.
Kelly’s release said the coalition of state officials suing the Trump administration plan to seek a temporary restraining order asking the court to immediately restore benefits.
“It is clear the federal government is making a deliberate, illegal, and inhumane choice not to fund the crucial SNAP program,” the press release says, noting that the Trump administration has made other exceptions to fund causes it supports during the shutdown.
For instance, border patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officers are still being paid as the shutdown nears the one-month mark.
The USDA memo disputing the legality of using emergency funds to keep SNAP going claimed that November benefits would be issued on time “if not for Congressional Democrats blocking government funding.”
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Kansas governor signs onto lawsuit challenging Trump admin over SNAP freeze."
