Grocery-aisle purchase rules that Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia spent much of 2025 negotiating with Washington are still frozen, nearly three months after a federal judge threw out the approvals behind them. None of the five states’ soda, candy or energy-drink restrictions has taken effect, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own program pages confirm that freeze is still current this week. For households using SNAP benefits in those states, the practical picture has not changed: benefit cards work the same way they did before any of these restrictions were approved, and grocery lists don’t need to change either.
The June 22 Order in Aragon v. Rollins
On June 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled for a group of SNAP recipients in Aragon et al. v. Rollins et al., vacating the Agriculture Department’s approval of food-purchase restriction waivers in five states and ordering that none of them may be implemented. The waivers had been approved one at a time over the prior year under Secretary Brooke Rollins, each narrowing what SNAP dollars could buy in a single state: soft drinks in Colorado, a switch to a state tax definition of food in Iowa, soda and energy drinks in Nebraska, and processed foods, soda, energy drinks and candy in Tennessee and West Virginia. Each waiver would have required retailers to stop accepting SNAP payment for those specific items; none of that change is in effect today, and the same food and beverage list SNAP recipients could use before any waiver was approved remains the list in effect in all five states.
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Four States’ Waiver Pages Still Carry the Same Notice
The clearest evidence that nothing has changed sits on the Agriculture Department’s own website. Iowa’s food-restriction waiver page still opens with the notice it posted right after the ruling, stating that the waiver’s implementation may not proceed. Iowa’s project would have limited SNAP purchases to items the state classifies as nontaxable food; under the order, it was never allowed to start.
USDA backed that notice with formal paperwork. On July 2, 2026, the department issued a guidance document telling retailers to stop implementing Iowa’s restriction, an instruction that only makes sense if the ban had already been called off. Colorado’s waiver page carries the identical vacatur notice and was last updated July 7, 2026 with no change since. That page also shows the waiver’s history: USDA approved it for two years starting March 1, 2026, then let Colorado push its planned start date back to October 30, 2026 — a start date the June order now makes moot, since the underlying approval itself no longer stands.
Why the Freeze Holds: The Court’s Reasoning and Nebraska’s Blocked Candy Expansion
The court’s decision, detailed in a legal analysis published after the ruling, rested on two findings: USDA had relied on the wrong statutory authority, because the waiver provision it used covers projects to improve program administration rather than to change what participants eat, and USDA skipped its own requirement to publish notice in the Federal Register at least 30 days before the projects began. Both defects applied across all five states, which is why the court vacated the group of approvals together rather than one state at a time, and why legal observers following the case expect the appeal process to run for months rather than weeks.
Nebraska’s waiver page shows how far that reach extends. The state’s original restriction covered soda and energy drinks; in May 2026, USDA approved adding candy to that same waiver, effective November 1, 2026. Because the candy addition was folded into the approval the court vacated in June, it carries no separate legal standing, so Nebraska SNAP shoppers will still be able to buy candy in November under the current order, the same as they can today.
What Stays the Same for SNAP Shoppers in the Five States
For SNAP households in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia, the money-management picture has not shifted since these restrictions were first announced. None of them ever took effect, so grocery budgets built around SNAP-eligible soda, candy or energy drinks do not need adjusting, and no household needs to track a start date for a rule a federal court has blocked. Retailers in the five states are under the same instruction: keep ringing up SNAP purchases under the old rules until told otherwise, with no reprogramming of checkout systems required.
That could still change. USDA has appealed the ruling, and the five states’ restrictions stay frozen only as long as that appeal remains unresolved. Tennessee’s own waiver page, updated as recently as September 10, 2026, still displays the same vacatur notice as the other four states — the most current confirmation, one week before this article, that Washington has not restored any of the five bans. Until one of the five pages changes that status, the pre-waiver rules are the ones that apply at the register.
Keeping SNAP and Medicaid Coverage Active While the Waiver Fight Continues
The five-state purchase dispute is about what SNAP dollars can buy, not about whether a household keeps receiving them. Coverage itself runs on a separate track: recertification paperwork, income reporting, and renewal windows that each state manages on its own calendar, independent of any court case. None of that paperwork pauses while an appeal works its way through the D.C. Circuit.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer is a 13-page organizer with 51 state packs, a renewal document checklist, and a renewal and reporting calendar, including guidance on the 90-day window after coverage is dropped.
See the SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer.
AI-assisted research and drafting; reviewed by an editor.
