Court Order Prevents Trump Administration from Unlawfully Shutting Down the FEMA BRIC Program
BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown and a coalition of 21 states won their lawsuit against the Trump administration over its unlawful attempt to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) bipartisan Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, designed to protect communities from natural disasters before they strike.
For the past 30 years, the BRIC program has provided communities across the nation with resources to proactively fortify their infrastructure against natural disasters. By focusing on mitigation, the program protects lives, communities, and property – supporting state, tribal, and local governments to prevent harms from disasters, rather than just recovering from them.
“Every Marylander who has watched floodwaters destroy their home or seen their community torn apart by a natural disaster understands why the Trump administration's unlawful cuts to the BRIC program were so reckless," said Attorney General Brown. “Our lawsuit protected this important funding that will safeguard people and property from future disasters."
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 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. Maryland was awarded over $80 million in BRIC funds from 2020-2023, although much of that money was made unavailable when FEMA purported to terminate the program earlier this year. That decision left important infrastructure projects, like mitigation to protect Crisfield, Maryland, and South Baltimore from flooding, without a large share of project funds.
The 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 Separation of Powers, the Appropriations and Spending Clauses, 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.
Joining Attorney General Brown in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
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