State Officials, Advocates Brace For SNAP Dollars Ending For 680,000 Marylanders

By Danielle J. Brown, Maryland Matters

October 29, 2025

With funding expected to end in just days, LaMonika James doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Marylanders who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to eat.

She does know that without federal funds, the state won’t be able to continue running SNAP for long — if at all. And she also knows that, without SNAP, the 680,000 people in Maryland who get the benefit may not be able to put food on the table.

“We’re running the risk of heading into a hunger cliff, especially ahead of the holidays where we will see increased rates of food insecurity,” said Jones, the director of Maryland Hunger Solutions.

Jones is just one of many advocates bracing for Nov. 1, when the Trump administration claims that at the government shutdown drags on it will run out of funding for the program that 42 million Americans rely on.

SNAP benefits are funded by the federal government, with states responsible for the cost of administering the program. In previous shutdowns, federal dollars continued to support SNAP to avoid a disruption in benefits, insuring that low-income households can still afford groceries in that time.

That was the plan for this shutdown as recently as September, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which operates SNAP, said it would dip into contingency funds to keep the program going. But last week, the USDA issued a memo that said it could not legally tap the contingency funds for SNAP during a shutdown, before blaming the shutdown on Democrats. The USDA told states that the “the well has run dry.”

State officials, advocates map out a grim future for food benefits under federal cuts to SNAP

Democratic leaders from 25 states and the District of Columbia, including Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts on Tuesday, claiming that that has never been the policy and asking the court to order the USDA to continue funding SNAP.

Jones said she is concerned about “the USDA’s decision not to utilize contingency funds or their authority to find additional funds within their wheelhouse to issue those benefits.”

“This will jeopardize millions of Americans across the country, but especially the more than 680,000 Maryland residents who are relying on their benefits to restart in November as well as to carry us through the holidays,” she said.

Those 680,000 SNAP recipients account for about 11% of the state’s population, or about 1 in 9 Marylanders, according to 2024 data from the USDA. The average monthly benefit in the state this year is about $180 per person, according to USDA data from May.

Among Maryland SNAP recipients are 262,248 under age 18. Another 121,615 SNAP recipients are 62 or older, while 128,705 people with disabilities and 28,843 people experiencing homelessness also benefited from SNAP, according to the attorney general’s press release about the lawsuit.

“We’re very concerned about our households,” Jones said, “especially our households with children, our older adults, those individuals who are disabled – we’re looking at their ability to continue having access to benefits to feed themselves.”

Maryland food banks were already stretched by the need from mass federal layoffs throughout the year, as well as from recently furloughed federal employees who are not paid while the government is shut down. Now they are bracing for another surge in demand if SNAP benefits end this weekend.

Jones says it’s up to the USDA to provide funding for SNAP benefits, and not doing so will put “a real strain on the entire food system.”

“It’s a decision to push households and families further into food insecurity, knowing that we have 42 million households that are relying on SNAP benefits,” Jones said. “And it removes the reassurance that they will be able to take care of themselves and be able to feed their families.

Not only will the federal government not be distributing SNAP funds during this shutdown, as it has before, it’s unclear if it will backfill any state dollars used to keep the program afloat.

How will Maryland respond?

Moore vows to keep some federal programs in Maryland operating – for now

The impact of the suspended SNAP funding, as well as what to do about it, will be the focus of a joint meeting Wednesday of the Maryland House Appropriations and the Senate Budget and Taxation committees. The hearing will assess the impacts of missing SNAP dollars and discuss whether it would be wise for the state to cover those funds with its own money.

In a Friday statement, Gov. Wes Moore (D) said that funding SNAP is the federal government’s responsibility, and Maryland will be unable to keep money flowing to the benefit long-term unless the Trump administration plans to reimburse those funds. He said Trump’s “reckless actions” have led to “grave fiscal uncertainty.”

“The Maryland Treasury holds roughly $3.5 billion in short-term cash to help bridge reimbursable federal expenses and myriad other State expenses, but we do not have confidence that the Trump Administration will reimburse us — not only for SNAP, but for any federal programs that may suffer for the duration of this senseless shutdown,” Moore’s statement said.

“As I have long said — there is no balance sheet to make up for when the federal government just decides to tell states, ‘You’re on your own,’” his statement said. “We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure the federal government follows the law and provides funding for the critical services that our families, our children, and our veterans rely on.”

It’s unclear from Friday’s statement whether the Moore administration plans to fund November SNAP benefits, or hold back until the Trump administration guarantees reimbursement.

At the start of the shutdown on Oct 1, Moore said that one of the state’s top priorities would be to “keep federal programs running” while the government was shut down. In talking to reporters at that time, Moore did caution that if federal agencies advise that reimbursements would not go out, it “may impact the state’s posture” on continuing to fund programs during the shutdown.

A handful of other states, both Republican and Democrat-led, have promised to keep SNAP funded during the shutdown. But Jones agrees that without federal funding, those states will likely be unable to keep dollars flowing for long.

“When this has happened previously (states covering benefits during a shutdown)… it has been done with the guarantee and reassurance from the USDA that those funds will be reimbursed when the government opens back up,” Jones said. “Not receiving that reimbursement will potentially put many states in a deficit – Maryland included.”