DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Federal judge says Trump administration must restore disaster money to Democratic states

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to reallocate federal Homeland Security funding away from states that refuse to cooperate with certain federal immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy’s ruling on Monday solidified a win for the coalition of 12 attorneys general that sued the administration earlier this year after being alerted that their states would receive drastically reduced federal grants due to their “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

In total, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency reduced more than $233 million from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The money is part of a $1 billion program where allocations are supposed to be based on assessed risks, with states then largely passing most of the money on to police and fire departments.

The cuts were unveiled shortly after a separate federal judge in a different legal challenge ruled it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions to get FEMA disaster funding.

In her 48-page ruling, McElroy found that the federal government was weighing states’ police on federal immigration enforcement on whether to reduce federal funding for the Homeland Security Grant Program and others.

“What else could defendants’ decisions to cut funding to specific counterterrorism programming by conspicuous round numbered amounts — including by slashing off the millions-place digits of awarded sums — be if not arbitrary and capricious? Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result,” McElroy wrote.

The Trump-appointed judge then ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore the previously announced funding allocations to the plaintiff states.

“Defendants’ wanton abuse of their role in federal grant administration is particularly troublesome given the fact that they have been entrusted with a most solemn duty: safeguarding our nation and its citizens,” McElroy wrote. “While the intricacies of administrative law and the terms and conditions on federal grants may seem abstract to some, the funding at issue here supports vital counterterrorism and law enforcement programs.”

McElroy notably cited the recent Brown University attack, where a gunman killed two students and injured nine others, as an event where the $1 billion federal program would be vital in responding to such a tragedy.

“To hold hostage funding for programs like these based solely on what appear to be defendants’ political whims is unconscionable and, at least here, unlawful,” the Rhode Island-based judge wrote in her ruling, issued little more than a week after the Brown shooting.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the department plans on fighting the order.

“This judicial sabotage threatens the safety of our states, counties, towns, and weakens the entire nation,” McLaughlin said. “We will fight to restore these critical reforms and protect American lives.”

Meanwhile, attorneys general who sued the administration applauded the order.

“This victory ensures that the Trump Administration cannot punish states that refuse to help carry out its cruel immigration agenda, particularly by denying them lifesaving funding that helps prepare for and respond to disasters and emergencies,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a statement.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-sanctuary-city-trump-fema-9c441d9cbe953a8ecd78123f0fe8a64e

Court blocks ‘arbitrary and capricious’ changes to FEMA grants

FEMA’s “abrupt change in policy is particularly harmful to local emergency management,” the judge stated.

Dive Brief:

The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon blocked the Trump administration from withholding grant money from states for emergency management, disaster relief and homeland security operations, stating that changes to the conditions and timing of the grants were “arbitrary and capricious.”

A coalition of 12 states sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in November after FEMA froze Emergency Management Performance Grant funds until states verified that population counts excluded people removed under federal immigration law — which required data states said they did not have access to. The administration also reduced the grant reimbursement window from three years to one.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement, called the decision “judicial sabotage” that “threatens the safety of our states, counties, towns,” and she said the Trump administration “will fight to restore these critical reforms and protect American lives.”

Dive Insight:

EMPG grants fund approximately 50% of Arizona’s emergency management functions, Hawai‘i’s public information and warning systems and equipment and training for Wisconsin’s SWAT and urban search and rescue teams, according to the Dec. 23 ruling. The funds were used for preparedness and response operations during 2024’s Tropical Storm Helene in North Carolina and severe flash flooding in Maryland.

In their lawsuit, Arizona, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Wisconsin and the governor of Kentucky said DHS and FEMA “provided no reasoned explanation (or, indeed, any explanation) for why they added this hold, no legal basis for adding the hold, and no guidance for States to use in attempting to comply.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Amy Potter wrote in the Dec. 23 ruling that the rule changes forced states to “face a Hobson’s choice: accept the grant subject to a term they feel is unlawful or decline to accept.”

“This abrupt change in policy is particularly harmful to local emergency management,” Potter wrote.

Potter said that states have “no way of complying with the Population Certification Hold,” and the reimbursement window change would cause funding lapses that risk emergency management and homeland security capacities. “Many states and localities would not be reimbursed for emergency management expenses already incurred,” she wrote.

Therefore, Potter wrote, the grant changes are not “consistent with Congressional intent or FEMA’s mission.”

“The court saw through FEMA’s attempt to break the law and deny money that North Carolina relies on to respond to hurricanes, natural disasters, and other emergencies,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said in a statement. “Our state is going to get back the $17 million that Congress promised so that our emergency responders and law enforcement officers are ready to respond to the next crisis.”

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/FEMA-court-blocks-grant-changes-emergency-management/808824/