Attorney General Bonta Blocks Unlawful Funding Cuts to Disaster Preparedness Program

Court issues permanent injunction blocking Trump Administration from illegally shutting down the FEMA BRIC program

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of 20 states today secured a permanent injunction blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) bipartisan Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. Since 2020, FEMA has made billions of dollars available under the BRIC program to prepare for and mitigate the risks from disasters before they happen. California is the largest beneficiary of this program and could receive over a billion dollars for future projects that FEMA had selected for grant funding before the program was unlawfully terminated. 

“FEMA’s BRIC program provides critical funding that helps communities prepare for disasters before they strike,” said Attorney General Bonta. “The BRIC program has bipartisan support. It saves taxpayers money. It improves our infrastructure, and it protects our communities. It’s a win-win. That’s why we went to court to protect this program when the Trump Administration attempted to unlawfully shut it down. Today, the court ruled in our favor, issuing a final ruling that ensures this funding continues to flow to climate resilience projects across our state.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed a law mandating that FEMA must protect communities through four interrelated functions – mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery. The BRIC program is at the core of FEMA’s mitigation efforts. BRIC projects are required to be cost-effective, and a recent study concluded that every dollar FEMA spends on mitigation saves an average of six dollars in post-disaster costs. The BRIC program supports often difficult-to-fund projects, such as constructing evacuation shelters and flood walls, safeguarding utility grids against wildfires, protecting wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, and fortifying bridges, roadways, and culverts.   

Over the past four years, FEMA has selected nearly 2,000 projects to receive roughly $4.5 billion in BRIC funding nationwide. In California, projects that have been awarded funding include: 

• A project in City of Rancho Palos Verdes to reduce geologic landslide movement that threatens most of the City’s residents and infrastructure, including a major arterial roadway that provides community and emergency access, sanitation sewer lines located along this roadway, electric and communication lines, potable water lines, and gas lines. Without this project, landslide movement will continue to threaten critical infrastructure, damage homes and property, and endanger lives. 
• A project in the City of Sacramento to mitigate flooding of five major interchanges, 3.9 miles of a major interstate highway, a runway at an airport, surface streets, 27,000 housing units, and more. Among other things, the project would have improved floodwall sections, improved levee sections, and relocated a pump station. 
• A project in Kern County to seismically retrofit the Kern Valley Healthcare District’s hospital that provides acute care and emergency medical services to a remote population in the mid-northern region of the Kern River Valley area. Unless seismically retrofitted, the hospital may soon need to close. This would force hundreds of thousands of Californians to seek services at hospitals over two hours away.

Today’s court decision affirms the coalition’s position that FEMA’s decision to abruptly terminate the BRIC program is in direct violation of Congress’s decision to fund it, and that the Executive Branch has no lawful authority to unilaterally refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress. The judge also concluded that FEMA’s actions violate the Separation of Powers doctrine and the Administrative Procedure Act. The decision prevents FEMA from terminating the BRIC program and requires the restoration of these critical funds to the communities relying on them.   

Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and the District of Columbia.