USDA calls it a demonstration project when a state asks to bar SNAP shoppers from buying soda or candy. A federal court in Washington called it something else this summer: exceeding the agency’s authority under the wrong section of federal law.
That distinction is why five states that once had approved SNAP purchase restrictions still don’t have them today, three months after a judge threw the approvals out. Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia remain listed as vacated on USDA’s own tracking page, unchanged since the ruling.
What the June 22 order actually found
The order came in Aragon v. Rollins, No. 1:26-cv-00861, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and assigned to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, according to case-tracking by the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. The court held that USDA had approved the five states’ restrictions under Section 17(b) of the Food and Nutrition Act, when nutrition-focused demonstrations belong under a different provision, Section 2026(k), which requires “publicly available criteria,” “evidence-based strategies” and “rigorous outcome evaluations,” according to the Food Research and Action Center’s summary of the ruling. “Congress specifically authorized incentive-based strategies to encourage healthier eating,” the court wrote. “It did not authorize USDA to redefine what qualifies as food under SNAP.”
Two records that don’t move together: A court ruling over which items a SNAP card can buy changes nothing about the recertification paperwork a household still owes its own state, and that paperwork differs by state. The state packs and document checklist in The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer lay out what each state’s process actually requires.
Five states sent back to square one
Before the ruling, Colorado’s waiver would have restricted soft drinks; Iowa’s covered a broader category of “taxable food items”; Nebraska’s targeted soda, other soft drinks and energy drinks, with a candy restriction that had been due to follow on Nov. 1; Tennessee’s reached processed foods and drinks including soda, energy drinks and candy; and West Virginia’s applied to soft drinks, according to the descriptions on the FNA waiver tracking page. All five approvals were vacated in the same order, and none has been resubmitted or reapproved since.
The court also found a separate, procedural problem: USDA had not published Federal Register notices 30 days before implementation, a step the ruling said is required for projects with this kind of public impact, per FRAC’s account of the decision.
USDA’s own tracking page confirms nothing has changed
The waiver page, last updated Sept. 16, still lists all five states under vacated approvals rather than active ones, the same status it has carried since June. That page is the same one FNA uses to record every other state’s active or upcoming restriction, which makes its unchanged entry for these five a real-time signal that the order has not been stayed, reversed or mooted by a new filing.
The same legal theory reaches every other approved waiver
The ruling did not touch the ten states whose restrictions are already in effect, or the three more due to start by Oct. 1, because those approvals were not the ones challenged in Aragon. But the court’s reasoning, that USDA used the wrong statute to approve any SNAP food restriction, applies to the legal basis behind every one of them, not just the five it vacated. Whether that argument gets tested against the rest of the list is now a question for whoever files the next challenge.
What a vacated waiver means at the register right now
For a SNAP household in the five affected states, the immediate effect is that nothing changed at checkout. Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia shoppers can still use their benefits on the same items they could buy before their states’ restrictions were ever approved, because a vacated waiver means the underlying SNAP rules on eligible food revert to the national baseline rather than some interim, half-restricted category. That baseline already excludes items like alcohol, tobacco and hot prepared food, the same exclusions that apply everywhere else in the country regardless of any state-specific waiver.
USDA could try again. Nothing in the June 22 order forbids the agency from resubmitting a restriction proposal for these five states under the statute the court said actually governs nutrition demonstrations, Section 2026(k), with the public criteria and evaluation plan that section requires. As of this week’s read of the tracking page, no new filing for any of the five states has appeared.
The Paperwork a Court Order Doesn’t Touch
A ruling over which items a SNAP card can buy says nothing about whether a household’s own case stays open in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, West Virginia or anywhere else. That renewal decision runs through a separate, state-specific process with its own document list and its own clock, court order or not.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer combines state packs with a renewal document checklist to show what a household’s own state requires, regardless of what a federal court just decided about purchases.
Compare the state packs in The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources.
