A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama struck down the Trump administration’s push to let states bar food-stamp recipients from spending benefits on soda, candy, and energy drinks, a ruling the White House immediately promised to challenge. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has sat on the D.C. bench since 2011, found that the USDA lacked legal authority to approve the state waivers at the heart of the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.
The decision halts pilot programs in five states, Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, where the Department of Agriculture had already green-lit restrictions on certain sugary products purchased with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars. SNAP recipients in those states, represented by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice and the firm Shinder Cantor Lerner, brought the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The practical effect: taxpayers will continue subsidizing junk-food purchases through SNAP even as the administration argues those purchases drive obesity, diabetes, and ballooning health-care costs among the very low-income families the program is supposed to help.
Jackson’s written ruling turned on a narrow but consequential point. Congress, she wrote, already defined what counts as “food” under SNAP. The agriculture secretary cannot rewrite that definition by approving state waiver requests, no matter how well-intentioned the policy goal. Fox News Digital reported the key passage of the opinion:
“Congress set out clearly the type of experimental projects that could be tested to address the unquestionably serious health issues attributed to the rise of obesity in the population in general and particularly the low-income population. But it did not invite the Secretary to ignore its directives by trying to advance those ends under the banner of ‘efficiency’ or administrative improvements.”
Jackson went further, as the Washington Examiner noted, stating that while the administration “may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” officials “cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”
That framing is worth pausing on. The judge did not dispute the health problem. She did not question the administration’s motives. She said the mechanism was wrong, that the USDA tried to accomplish through waivers what only Congress can authorize through statute.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins wasted no time. In a post on X, Rollins called the decision the work of “an activist judge” and framed the stakes in blunt terms:
“SNAP is for food, not sugar bombs fueling obesity, diabetes, and skyrocketing healthcare costs for low-income families. Taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize junk food and drinks at the expense of American health.”
A USDA spokesperson echoed that posture, telling reporters, “The idea that taxpayer funds should not be used to purchase junk food should not be controversial. USDA will not be backing down from the fight to Make America Healthy Again, including for families and communities reliant on SNAP.”
The ruling adds to a growing list of federal court decisions blocking Trump administration policy moves, a pattern that has frustrated the White House across multiple agencies and issue areas.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly framed the ruling as a temporary setback, not a conclusion. She told Fox News Digital:
“Amid a chronic disease epidemic, President Trump was elected with a resounding mandate to Make America Healthy Again. This administration has rightfully put real food at the center of SNAP to promote healthier options for families in need. This will not be the final say on the matter.”
The USDA had moved aggressively on SNAP reform. Newsmax reported the department had approved food-restriction waivers in 23 states as part of the broader MAHA initiative, not just the five states named in the lawsuit. Whether Jackson’s ruling applies only to those five plaintiff states or sweeps in all 23 remains an open question the opinion does not clearly resolve.
SNAP serves roughly 42 million low-income Americans each month. Plaintiffs in the case argued the restrictions would undermine their ability to manage health conditions, a claim that sits in tension with the administration’s argument that the restrictions were designed to improve health outcomes in the first place.
The ruling vacated USDA Secretary Rollins’s approval letters to the five plaintiff states, Breitbart reported, effectively unwinding the legal basis for those pilot programs. Jackson held that Rollins “didn’t just waive an administrative or technical obstacle” but instead redefined “food” as Congress had written it into law, a step Just The News noted the judge found exceeded the secretary’s authority.
The idea of restricting SNAP purchases is not new, and it has never survived contact with the federal bureaucracy or the courts. In 2011, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked the Obama administration’s USDA to let the city block food-stamp recipients from buying sugary drinks. The USDA rejected the request, saying the proposal did not clearly demonstrate whether such a restriction would actually improve health outcomes.
More than a decade later, the Trump administration tried a different route, state-level waivers rather than a single city request, and ran into the same wall, this time erected by a judge Obama himself appointed.
The pattern extends well beyond SNAP. An Obama-appointed judge previously struck down the administration’s H-1B visa fee, calling it an unauthorized tax. Across immigration, defense, and now nutrition policy, federal courts have repeatedly told the executive branch it cannot do through administrative action what Congress has not authorized by statute.
That legal principle is not inherently hostile to conservative governance. Separation of powers is a constitutional bedrock. But the practical result is that popular, common-sense reforms stall in courtrooms while the underlying problems, in this case, a taxpayer-funded program that subsidizes products linked to chronic disease, persist unchanged.
Rollins and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made SNAP reform a centerpiece of their joint agenda. Kennedy has traveled to multiple states to work with governors on healthier food policies. On March 28, 2025, he appeared alongside West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey in Martinsburg, where Morrisey held a letter of intent requesting changes to the state’s SNAP and food dye rules. Both wore “Make America Healthy Again” hats.
By February 2026, Kennedy, Rollins, and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson gathered at HHS headquarters in Washington to celebrate the implementation of new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a sign that the administration’s health agenda extends beyond SNAP alone.
Yet the court ruling undercuts the most visible and tangible piece of that agenda. Courts have blocked Trump administration policies on fronts ranging from military personnel rules to immigration enforcement, and the White House has responded each time with appeals and vows to fight.
Several questions remain unanswered. The nature of Jackson’s order, whether it functions as a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction, or a final ruling on the merits, is not specified in available reporting. The case name and docket number have not been widely published. And the fate of the 18 or so states with approved waivers that were not parties to this lawsuit hangs in legal limbo.
The White House has made clear it intends to appeal. Kelly’s statement that “this will not be the final say” signals the administration views the fight as heading to the D.C. Circuit and potentially beyond. Federal judges have struck down other Trump policies only to see them revived or reshaped on appeal, and the administration plainly expects the same trajectory here.
If the USDA’s waiver approach is legally dead, the alternative is legislation, asking Congress to amend the Food and Nutrition Act to exclude sugary drinks and candy from the statutory definition of eligible food. That path is slower, messier, and subject to the usual lobbying from the beverage and snack industries. But it would be the one route Jackson’s ruling leaves wide open.
Strip away the legal mechanics and the political back-and-forth, and the core issue is simple enough for any taxpayer to grasp: Should federal benefits designed to feed low-income families be spent on products that contribute to the very health crises those families disproportionately suffer?
The judge said the administration picked the wrong tool. She did not say the goal was wrong. The USDA said taxpayers should not subsidize junk food. The plaintiffs said restricting their choices would hurt them. Congress, as usual, has said nothing at all.
When everyone agrees there is a problem and nobody with the authority to fix it will act, the only winners are the companies selling soda by the case to families on food stamps.
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