SNAP Soda Ban Starts Today in Four States: What Changes at the Register — and What Does Not Change in Texas
Starting Nov. 1, SNAP shoppers in Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia can no longer buy soda and other sweetened drinks with their benefits — and candy too in the first three — under USDA waivers a federal judge has already thrown out in five other states. Texas is not on the waiver list, so nothing changes at San Antonio registers today.
Four more states cut soda from the nation's food assistance program today. Starting Nov. 1, families in Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina and Virginia can no longer use SNAP benefits to buy soda and other sweetened drinks, and in the first three states candy is off the list too, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's waiver list as reported in the account read in full this cycle. The four join eight states that already enforce similar bans. The rules differ by state: South Carolina's ban leaves diet and zero-sugar sodas eligible, while Virginia's covers carbonated sweetened drinks including diet and zero sodas, with juice, milk, sports drinks, iced tea and lemonade still eligible, per the Virginia Department of Social Services as reported there. Benefit amounts do not change — a blocked item simply will not ring up on an EBT card, and shoppers can pay for it another way in the same transaction. In South Carolina alone, the rules reach about 481,856 people in 235,235 households, based on June 2026 figures reported by WTOC and carried in the account.
The bans are starting on legally contested ground. In June, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson vacated USDA's approvals for Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia in Aragon v. Rollins, a suit brought by five SNAP recipients from those states, finding that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had no authority to waive the definition of 'food' as Congress laid it down and that USDA skipped a required 30-day public notice, per the Tennessee Lookout reporting carried in the account. The ruling covered only the five states where the plaintiffs lived; the government appealed to the D.C. Circuit in August, and USDA asked South Carolina and North Dakota to push their start dates to Nov. 1 so it could take public comments first, per Food Dive as reported there. A peer-reviewed study in Health Affairs Scholar, carried in the same account, found that after 10 states began restrictions in early 2026 the number of convenience stores accepting SNAP ran 1.4 percent below trend — 2.2 percent in states banning both drinks and candy — while supermarkets showed no clear decline; the authors cautioned they did not study why stores left.
Texas is not part of today's change. Texas does not appear on the USDA waiver list read this cycle — not among the states starting bans today, the eight already enforcing them, or the next group scheduled (Nebraska on Dec. 1, then Kansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Ohio and Hawaii in 2027, per USDA's list as reported) — so San Antonio SNAP households face no new soda or candy restriction at the register today. The station's November SNAP payments file (SQ-20261031-075, published this morning) covers the separate question of when November benefits land on Texas cards.
