The court’s action allows the administration, for now, to continue withholding about US$4 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, known as SNAP or food stamps.

Lawyers for the administration told the justices on Monday that an end to the government shutdown would eliminate its need to halt the judge’s order, so the court’s extension of a pause issued last Friday by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson may prove short-lived.

Jackson, on Tuesday, wrote that she would have denied the administration’s request to further halt the judge’s order.

The extended pause is set to expire on Thursday.

The US Senate on Monday approved compromise legislation that would end the longest government shutdown in US history, breaking a weeks-long stalemate that has disrupted food benefits for millions, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers unpaid and snarled air traffic.

SNAP benefits lapsed at the start of the month for the first time in the programme’s 60-year history.

Recipients have turned to already strained food pantries and made sacrifices like forgoing medications to stretch tight budgets.