SCOTUS Tariff Decision Backfires on Trump, Unveiling Unexpected Links to Colorado Threats in Tina Peters Case

President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon Tina Peters, a staunch supporter who denied the results of the 2020 election and was subsequently imprisoned, came under scrutiny last week. This action coincided with a controversial move by his administration against Colorado, as a federal judge highlighted a potential link between the two events. With the Trump administration threatening Colorado’s involvement in the food stamp program, Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson refused to overlook the suspicious timing, choosing instead to prevent any negative repercussions.

Judge Jackson, appointed by former President Barack Obama, expressed concerns in a document released Monday. He noted that the Trump administration’s threats concerning Colorado’s continued participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) did not happen in isolation. The judge perceived these threats, articulated in an “astonishing” letter from USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins to Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis, as a clear attempt to “punish” the state without prior warning, just before the holidays.

The judge pointed out that a similar communication was sent to Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat and political adversary of Trump. However, it was Colorado, receiving the letter on December 18, that was uniquely singled out by the USDA to participate in a “pilot project” related to SNAP administration. This was supposedly part of an initiative to combat “nationwide benefits fraud,” making Colorado the only state besides Minnesota to face such demands.

According to court documents, the letter sought to compel Colorado to reassess the eligibility of all SNAP households in five of its most populous counties within a tight 30-day timeframe, under the threat of “financial sanctions.” This move raised legal questions about the extent of authority wielded by Rollins.

While Rollins does possess certain powers under 7 U.S. Code § 2026(b)(1)(A) to implement “pilot or experimental projects” aimed at enhancing the efficiency and delivery of SNAP benefits, Judge Jackson emphasized that this authority is not without limits. The judge’s ruling underscores the ongoing tension and legal challenges surrounding federal oversight and state compliance in social welfare programs.

And here, Rollins’ claims of authority under the Food and Nutrition Act (FNA) as applied to Colorado embraced an “extraordinary power” that failed for the same reason that the U.S. Supreme Court said the International Emergency Economic Powers Act didn’t authorize Trump’s tariffs — the major questions doctrine, Jackson continued.

“[T]he major questions doctrine precludes finding that the FNA grants the Secretary the ‘extraordinary power’ asserted here,” the judge wrote, citing Trump’s Supreme Court loss in the case of Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump and quoting Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence: “[When] executive branch officials claim Congress has granted them an extraordinary power, they must identify clear statutory authority for it.”

Agreeing that Colorado was “likely to succeed in showing” that the letter violated the FNA, that it was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and that it violated the Spending Clause of the Constitution by claiming a power to “effectively rewrite the whole of the FNA through the vehicle of compulsory […] pilot projects,” Jackson blocked the Trump administration from “compelling Colorado’s participation in the pilot project or taking any adverse action against Colorado for its refusal to comply with any of the demands of the Recertification Letter.”

The judge took the view that it was no accident that the administration “launched a barrage of threats” that seemed “designed” to “punish” Colorado after he pardoned Peters federally but that clemency neither absolved the former Mesa County clerk of state election tampering crimes nor swayed officials to release her from state prison.

“Although Colorado was not forewarned, the Recertification Letter did not arrive in a vacuum. On December 11th, President Trump announced that he had pardoned former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters for her convictions of state crimes related to her efforts to breach Colorado voting machines and election data,” the judge said. “Later that week, at an Oval Office media event, the President attacked ‘weak and pathetic’ Governor Polis for not releasing Ms. Peters.”

Peters remains behind bars to this day, even as Polis has weighed — over opposition from his own party — shortening her sentence.

The Trump administration’s “pilot project” letter to Polis would arrive six days after Peters’ presidential pardon, as a “flurry” of other seemingly punitive terminations of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding unfolded, Jackson added.

Informing the judge’s ruling that the USDA acted “contrary to reasoned and reasonable agency decision-making” was his rejection of the evidence — or lack thereof — that the administration came up with to support its claims about fraud.

Bashing the government’s “vague” and “inscrutable reference to ‘public reports’ of ‘apparently illegal activities in Colorado’ involving gangs and affecting public benefits” as “easily dismissed,” Jackson said that even the USDA “acknowledged it has no direct evidence that SNAP fraud in Colorado is going undetected” but had relied on a belief that Colorado is “more susceptible to fraud because parts of its program are administered at the county level.”

That’s not the kind of evidence needed to green-light an “immediate, sweeping mandate untethered to any discernible experimental design or evaluation plan” that also “threatens harsh sanctions for noncompliance,” the judge concluded.

“The Court also need not turn a blind eye to the fact that the Recertification Letter arrived during a week of apparent punishments and threats aimed at Colorado, nor that the identical Minnesota Letter was accompanied by a taunting social media post from the Secretary,” Jackson remarked.

Read the full filing here.