Left: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP). Right: U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns during the Marrakech International Justice Conference in May 2018 (Marrakech International Justice Conference/YouTube).
The Trump administration unlawfully eradicated a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant program designed to reduce the consequences of natural disasters, a federal judge has ruled.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) pre-disaster mitigation program is the largest of its kind offered through FEMA, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns notes in his 19-page order. Its funding is allocated by Congress, which has mandated that FEMA not significantly reduce its “core responsibilit[y]” of mitigation.
The case considers the separation of powers between the branches of government, and Stearns opines that it is only the executive branch that has crossed a line.
“In sum, this is not a case about judicial encroachment on the discretionary authority of the Executive Branch,” the Bill Clinton appointee said. “This is a case about unlawful Executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose, and no more than that.”
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In April, the leader of FEMA announced that the BRIC program would be discontinued. Twenty states subsequently led a lawsuit in July against FEMA and its governing body, the Department of Homeland Security, alleging they violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal statute governing the behavior of departments and agencies, as well as multiple clauses of the Constitution.
As of Thursday”s order, no awarded grants had officially been terminated by FEMA.
While the Trump administration made the procedural argument that BRIC has not actually been terminated and thus the “States’ claims depend on a contingent future event,” Stearns found this argument unavailing.
“[T]he evidence in the record indicates that the decision to end the program has, for all practical purposes, been made,” he writes. “That FEMA has yet to formally terminate any already-awarded grants does not convince the court that the program’s future status remains up in the air.”
The federal government has also argued that the states “have not suffered any actual injury because they are not entitled” to the funding. However, once again, the judge batted down this line of thinking.
“[T]his is not literally true,” he writes, pointing to two pieces of legislation that “guarantee each State” a “threshold of mitigation funding each fiscal year.” Stearns goes on: “Thus, while FEMA has discretion whether to award funding for any single grant, it lacks discretion to refuse to award any funds to selected grants in a given fiscal year.”
The Trump administration appears to be planning on redirecting funds from the preventative BRIC program to reactive programs meant to deal with natural disasters after they’ve struck, according to the Boston-based jurist. Such an action is “unlawful.”
Stearns subsequently scolded the administration for its behavior, suggesting “bureaucratic obstruction” should not stand in the way of saving lives.
“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” he writes. “It need not be gainsaid that the imminence of disasters is not deterred by bureaucratic obstruction.”
“Any potential hardship to the Government, in contrast, is minimal,” he goes on. “The States do not ask the court to compel the agency to award any specific grants, nor do they ask the court to enjoin the agency from replacing the BRIC program in the future with a different mitigation program. Nor do they seek to prevent the Secretary of Homeland Security, as the overseeing executive of FEMA, from recommending to Congress that the BRIC program be abolished. The States’ requested relief is to enjoin the cancellation of the BRIC program as it is currently constituted by an act of Congress.”
As a result of Stearns’ order, FEMA must take all steps to ensure BRIC is in place as Congress intended.
The Department of Homeland Security, though, still maintains that it did not terminate the program, stating in comments to Reuters that “any suggestion to the contrary is a lie.”
