A US federal judge for the District of Columbia Sunday struck down a Trump administration rule that would have ended food stamps for 700,000 Americans.

The court struck down the rule after finding it arbitrary and capricious for its failure to account for the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on food stamp recipient numbers. The 700,000 person estimate was based on figures from before the pandemic and never revised. Judge Beryl A. Howell, the judge who ruled on the case, wrote:

In March 2020, when this Court largely granted preliminary injunction requests from nineteen States, the District of Columbia and the City of New York, as well as private plaintiffs, USDA estimated the prospective changes to SNAP would affect over one million people, by newly subjecting them to time limits on their eligibility to receive food under this program, and kick almost 700,000 able-bodied adults without dependents (“ABAWDs”) out of the SNAP program altogether. See 84 Fed. Reg. 66782, 66807, 66809 (touting savings “of about $1.1 billion per year” from reduction in SNAP benefit payments and estimating that 1,087,000 individuals would be newly subject to eligibility time limits and 688,000 individuals, in fiscal year (FY) 2021, will neither meet the new waiver requirement nor be exempt); ABAWD00000431 (Regulatory Impact Analysis), ECF No. 105-1. The agency has been icily silent about how many ABAWDs would have been denied SNAP benefits had the changes sought in the Final Rule been in effect while the pandemic rapidly spread across the country and congressional action had not intervened to suspend any time limits on receipt of those benefits. In the pandemic’s wake, as of May 2020, SNAP rosters have grown by over 17 percent with over 6 million new enrollees.

The new rule, finalized in December of 2019, required that food stamp recipients work a minimum of 20 hours a week to continue receiving food stamps for longer than three months.  Nineteen states, the District of Columbia, and New York City all filed suit to stop the rule from taking effect on April 1st.  Judge Howell had previously ordered rule enforcement to be halted until her decision.

The Trump administration has yet to indicate whether it will appeal the decision.