A person sits at a desk inside a mobile FEMA command center after tornadoes ripped through multiple U.S. states in downtown Dawson Springs, Kentucky, Dec. 14, 2021.
John Cherry | Reuters
A U.S. judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated the law by ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cut its staff in half.
In a ruling issued late Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said the Department of Homeland Security acted illegally by usurping FEMA’s authority over its own personnel and directing the agency to cut thousands of disaster response jobs.
Although FEMA is part of DHS, federal law adopted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 states that the department “shall not substantially or materially diminish (FEMA’s) powers, responsibilities, or functions.”
Illston agreed with the unions that filed the lawsuit and said the department violated the law when it moved last year to block FEMA from renewing temporary contracts for thousands of reserve workers who respond to disasters.
“There is no evidence in the record that this reversal or the subsequent conditions the Department of Homeland Security placed on FEMA’s renewal authority reflect rational decision-making,” Illston wrote.
Friday’s ruling did not include any remedies or penalties. Illston, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote that those matters will be taken up in a separate ruling next month, and that the parties may file briefs on the scope of relief they should provide the union.
FEMA and DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Democracy Forward, a left-wing group representing plaintiffs in the case, praised the ruling in a statement.
“Congress created FEMA to operate independently with a mission to rapidly prepare and respond when disasters occur,” said Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO.
In January, the union amended a lawsuit it filed last year to more broadly challenge the mass layoffs initiated by the Trump administration.
Unions argue that the planned layoffs at the Emergency Management Agency undermine its core disaster response mission, are not authorized by Congress, are not initiated within FEMA, and are illegal because they were ordered by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The Trump administration asserted that FEMA has considerable flexibility to determine appropriate staffing levels. President Donald Trump has previously suggested that FEMA should be abolished and that states should be responsible for emergency preparedness. President Trump created a council last year to review the agency’s operations.
In June, Mr. Illston ruled that FEMA had at least temporarily set back the plan and refused to immediately block the layoffs.
But she wrote Friday that FEMA appears to be making cuts. Illston said FEMA expects staffing levels for next year to be 11,383 people, or about half the previous level, but there was no basis for choosing that number.
In a separate ruling, the judge also faulted FEMA and DHS officials for using the messaging app Signal on personal cellphones to communicate about layoffs and message deletions.
Illston said he speculated that these messages would have been relevant to the case and that going forward, “the missing signaling messages would have been detrimental to the defendant as they would have provided further evidence of illegal activity.”
