Supreme Court ruling extends hunger

November 10 – The government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, is approaching its sixth week, making it the longest in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of government workers have gone without paychecks, forcing them to find second and even third jobs to help make ends meet. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that air travel would be reduced by 10% at 40 of the largest U.S. airports, because air traffic controllers aren’t being paid. This results in fatigue, stress and missed work days. 

To make it worse, 42 million people had their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — aka food stamps — cut off at the end of October. That an eighth of the U.S. population relies on the government to put needed food on the table, while the Pentagon was handed $900 billion, exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. 

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered that food stamps must be paid in full by Nov. 7. The anti-poor Trump administration had threatened to pay only partial SNAP benefits before the Nov. 7 ruling.

Flouting this order, the U.S. Justice Department appealed it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, arguing that there was no “lawful basis” to force the president to fund SNAP in full. 

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in charge of handling emergency appeals in that part of the country, granted a temporary pause, known as an administrative stay, on the Nov. 7 ruling. This means that the panel of appeals court judges will determine whether to halt or preserve the original order requiring the White House to fund SNAP benefits in full this month.

Some states had already begun the process of dispensing food stamps in anticipation of the Nov. 7 ruling being carried out. It is expected for these judges to rule “quickly,” but any delay results in agony for a hungry population. Adding to the chaos, on Nov. 9, the Trump administration cruelly ordered states not to supply full SNAP benefits.

What is the Supreme Court?

The fact that one Supreme Court judge can put a halt to a ruling that impacts 42 million lives is both cruel and criminal.  Nine judges, appointed for life by presidents, with the approval of the Senate, make rulings affecting an entire population that has no recourse; this exposes the undemocratic nature of the entire capitalist system.

The Supreme Court, the U.S. presidency and Congress were established by the Judiciary Act of 1789 within the framework of the U.S. Constitution. This document was written by the white “founding fathers” — rich property owners, enslavers and proponents of genocide of Indigenous nations. These bourgeois entities developed into the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the capitalist federal government. 

All three branches were to share the power of upholding class rule — to protect, at that time, the private property of big landowners, enslavers and bosses — today the billionaire ruling class. 

Out of the nine original justices, seven were appointed by pro-slavery presidents; and of these, five were from slaveholding families. One later justice, Hugo Black, appointed by the so-called liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had joined the terrorist Ku Klux Klan in 1923. 

The late chairperson of Workers World Party, Sam Marcy, wrote in 1989: “Alongside this bourgeois democratization of the political process [expansion of the right to vote], there has been a simultaneous social and economic process which is superior in strength. That is the process of the concentration of power in undemocratic bodies. It comes from the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a ruling class which holds the power and distributes it in areas most conducive to them. So it’s not an accident that power should ultimately be exercised by the Supreme Court. That’s most reliable to them, most conservative, responsive only to those who have appointed them.

“So much talk goes on about democracy, about the rights of the people to vote and to elect, but when it gets down to the really critical issues, political power is concentrated in undemocratic bodies that are removed from the control of the masses.” (workers.org, July 20, 1989)

This analysis remains true — no bourgeois institution can be depended upon to defend the rights of the working class, especially the most oppressed workers. Only an independent struggle can overturn class relations to lay the basis for a socialist society with a workers’ democracy where no one will have to go hungry, houseless or jobless. 

End the government shutdown! Release and increase SNAP benefits NOW!