Most Colorado SNAP beneficiaries to receive partial payments soon

By Sara Wilson, Colorado Newsline

Posted November 13, 2025

Coloradans who receive money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program should get partial payments in the coming days, state officials said Tuesday.

Most of the 600,000 people in the state who get SNAP benefits will receive up to 65% of their typical payment, per guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those beneficiaries “should begin to see those payments over the next few days,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement.

Conflicting court rulings and actions by the Trump administration have resulted in whiplash for people who rely on the program to pay for groceries. USDA officials first advised that funding for SNAP would not be available at all in November due to the federal government shutdown, prompting food banks to ramp up operations for an influx of new visitors.

After a coalition of states sued, a federal judge then ordered the federal government to fully fund SNAP using available contingency money, which the Trump administration then immediately appealed. States, including Colorado, began sending full payments to people late last week before the U.S. Supreme Court issued an administrative stay of the court order. The USDA then issued a memo on Sunday directing states to send the partial payments, and called any full payments to SNAP recipients unauthorized, requesting that states “immediately undo any steps taken.”

About 32,000 Coloradans received full SNAP payments last week before the administrative stay. Polis said that Colorado has not reversed those payments because they were authorized at the time.

“Nothing is preventing the Trump administration from fully funding SNAP benefits. They are simply choosing not to,” Polis’ statement said. “The fastest way to clean up this mess would be for the federal government to drop its court appeals.”

Colorado lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee approved a request by Polis to infuse the state’s food banks with cash while SNAP benefits were paused so they could buy enough provisions to meet increased demand.

The U.S. Senate approved a bill on Monday night to fund the government until the end of January. It would fully appropriate SNAP benefits for the year, however, avoiding another lapse should the federal government shutdown again. The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on the bill in the coming days.

Sara Wilson is a Reporter for Colorado Newsline. This article

is republished from Colorado Newsline under a Creative Commons license. Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.