"A plan to halve the agency’s sprawling work force was illegal, a judge ruled. But the court is not blocking other FEMA cuts."
"Unionized workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency won a big victory in federal court last week, but the ruling isn’t likely to stop the Trump administration’s plans to push more of the agency’s work to the states, potentially shedding more jobs.
Under then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, officials drew up plans last year to terminate half of FEMA’s staff, though they never actually implemented cuts that deep.
Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled on Friday that even making the plans violated a law passed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that protects FEMA’s independence from political decisions of officials at the Homeland Security Department, its parent agency.
But the ruling won’t force the government to rehire the thousands of workers that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency pushed out at FEMA, because those cuts weren’t part of the lawsuit. And it’s unlikely to stop the Trump administration from offloading more disaster relief responsibility to states and local governments, said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies disaster policy."
Scott Dance reports for the New York Times September 15, 2026.
