Lawsuit seeks to stop FEMA from cutting its workforce in half

A coalition of civil servant unions and local governments late Tuesday sued to block an alleged plan by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to halve its workforce. 

According to the complaint, agency managers on Dec. 23 received an email with instructions to cut more than 10,000 employees in the coming months as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce and shift more responsibility for disaster response and recovery to state and local officials. 

Beginning Dec. 31, Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery staffers, who work under two-to-four year contracts that are typically renewed, began to receive notices that their terms would not be extended after their end dates in January. CORE employees are often the first to deploy following a disaster and, according to the lawsuit, some of the terminated workers were in the middle of hurricane relief deployments. 

Government Executive and other outlets, however, reported that FEMA on Jan. 22 paused the blanket nonrenewals, as the disaster agency was responding to the recent winter storm. About 900 to 1,000 CORE employees have contract deadline dates in January, according to the filing. 

“The elimination of CORE positions on a rolling basis based on [termination date] is indiscriminate and unrelated to any workforce requirements, actual agency need or statutory mandate,” according to the lawsuit. “The lack of planning for this directive and the lack of notice to FEMA supervisors and employees prior to eliminating these positions will exacerbate the adverse impacts on the services the agency is required to provide.”

Plaintiffs argued that these staff cuts by FEMA and the Homeland Security Department, its parent agency, are unlawful because of statutory mandates for officials to maintain capacity for disaster response and recovery and requirements in the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act that prohibit DHS from significantly modifying FEMA’s mission. 

The complaint is supplemental to a lawsuit that was initially filed in April against the Trump administration’s agency reorganizations and workforce reductions. 

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment. 

In September, the Government Accountability Office warned that past disaster recovery efforts have been impeded by staffing shortages and that FEMA now had even fewer employees largely due to the Trump administration’s voluntary separation programs for government workers. 

The compromise fiscal 2026 DHS appropriations bill would increase FEMA’s operational budget by 18% and includes language to prohibit any agency reorganizations, office closures or eliminations in function without congressional authorization. 

But the House-passed measure’s outlook in the Senate is in doubt following the shooting of protestor Alex Pretti by DHS agents in Minneapolis, which ultimately could lead to a partial government shutdown beginning Saturday.