The Agriculture Department has raised the estimate of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits it can provide in November, from 50% to 65%. The new calculation is included in court papers filed in a federal lawsuit in Rhode Island.

The new benefits schedule is certain to come up at a hearing in that case scheduled for 3:30 pm ET today before U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. The judge already ordered USDA to provide at least partial benefits using the SNAP contingency fund, but the plaintiff cities and nonprofits are continuing to press for full benefits.

Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, said in a declaration that after the department sent out its first estimate of the benefits that would be available from the fund, it “performed further analysis and determined that the maximum allotments need only be reduced by 35%, instead of 50%, to deplete the SNAP contingency fund.”

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The revised table sent to states, which administer the program, shows the amount of the reductions. Maximum benefits for a family of four, for example, were estimated to drop to $497 for November. Now they are $646, about 66% of the maximum of $975 if the program were operating with full funding.

“Defendants realized this error and worked to issue new guidance and tables as soon as it was discovered, not in response to plaintiffs’ notice filed earlier this evening, and has issued a revised memorandum and allotment tables to state agencies,” Justice Department lawyers said in a notice to the court filed late Wednesday.

A new memo went out from Penn to the states Wednesday.

The recalculation came after the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities determined that USDA was cutting benefits more than needed. 

“CBPP analyzed USDA’s contingency fund spending plan & found it is only going to release 2/3 of the funding they committed to in court filings, cutting families’ SNAP benefits far more than necessary, violating USDA’s own regulations & shortchanging millions of families,” Katie Bergh, CBPP senior policy analyst on the food assistance team, said on X.

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