A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from approving state requests seeking to bar Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients from using benefits to buy junk food. 

Secretary Brooke Rollins’s Department of Agriculture has signed waiver requests from multiple states allowing them to ban the purchase of sugary items, such as soda, candy, and energy drinks, with SNAP benefits. But the effort, endorsed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was challenged in March by plaintiffs from five states who viewed the state waivers as an attack on “essential food assistance” that “destabilize food access.”