A group of 20 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over a decision to shut down a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program.
In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Boston, the states contend that FEMA unlawfully terminated its Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) program earlier in 2025 and said that only Congress can eliminate such a program.
“Communities across the country are being forced to delay, scale back, or cancel hundreds of mitigation projects depending on this funding,” their complaint said, adding that the consequences could be “devastating” ahead of future natural disasters.
“Projects that have been in development for years, and in which communities have invested millions of dollars for planning, permitting, and environmental review, are now threatened. And in the meantime, Americans across the country face a higher risk of harm from natural disasters.”
The states, led by Washington and Massachusetts, said that shutting down what they called “FEMA’s flagship pre-disaster mitigation program” is an unlawful maneuver because it violates the Constitution’s “core separation-of-powers principles.”
The states said they would seek a preliminary injunction requiring the program to be reinstated while the case proceeds.
The BRIC program, created in 2018 as an upgrade of existing grant programs, covers up to 75 percent of the costs of infrastructure projects, or 90 percent in rural areas, meant to protect communities from natural disasters. The funding has been used for evacuation shelters, flood walls, and improvements to roads and bridges, among other projects.
When FEMA announced the termination of the program in April, the agency said it had been wasteful, ineffective, and politicized. The move, the agency said, was designed to align more closely with President Donald Trump’s executive orders to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government.
In a now-deleted statement, the agency said that all BRIC applications between the fiscal years 2020 and 2023 would be canceled and that grant funds that “have not been distributed to states, tribes, territories, and local communities, will be immediately returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury.”
“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” a FEMA spokesperson said in a statement at the time.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in May urged FEMA to reinstate the grants, saying they were particularly crucial for rural and tribal communities, and to work with Congress to make the program more efficient.
FEMA, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has come under scrutiny for its response to floods in Texas earlier this month, which has put renewed focus on the administration’s moves to shrink or abolish the agency.
On July 16, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a statement announcing the lawsuit that the recent flooding in Texas, which caused more than 130 deaths, has made clear that federal funding is critical to helping states prepare for natural disasters.
“In the wake of devastating flooding in Texas and other states, it’s clear just how critical federal resources are in helping states prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” she said.
FEMA and DHS have not yet submitted a court filing in response to the lawsuit. The Epoch Times contacted DHS for comment on July 16.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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