WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from barring the use of food stamps to buy sugary drinks and candy.

Since last year, the Agriculture Department has approved waivers in more than 20 states that allow them to bar participants in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from using their benefits to buy soda, energy drinks, candy or other prepared desserts. In March, recipients in five states sued the agency over the waivers, arguing that the limits were unlawful and confusing and made it difficult to manage health conditions such as diabetes.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, in a 68-page decision, agreed with the recipients that the Agriculture Department did not have the authority to approve the waivers and also failed to abide by a notice period. Monday’s decision was a rollback of restrictions that officials have characterized as a major achievement of the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Jackson wrote that while the law allows for the department to approve projects related to the administrative and logistical efficiency of the SNAP program, the agency essentially “purports to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress.”

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” she wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

The case was brought by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of low-income people, and Shinder Cantor Lerner, an antitrust law firm.

Katharine Deabler-Meadows, a senior attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, said in a statement that the decision was “a major step in restoring essential food assistance to the millions of families that rely on SNAP nationwide.”

The Agriculture Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling. A spokesperson for the agency had earlier told The Associated Press that it “will not be backing down from the fight to Make America Healthy Again.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Linda Qiu/Nic Antaya
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