A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration acted unlawfully when it directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cut its workforce roughly in half, delivering a win to labor unions in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California found that the Department of Homeland Security had unlawfully seized control of FEMA's staffing decisions, ordering a plan to shrink the agency from about 23,000 employees to roughly 11,500 and blocking the renewal of contracts for hundreds of on-call disaster-response reservists. In a 32-page opinion, she wrote that DHS's arithmetic behind the cut had no basis in evidence: "the FEMA staffing plan number appears as if pulled from thin air." She also found no "reasoned decision-making" behind the administration's later about-face on the reservists' contracts.
Illston grounded her ruling in the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, a 2006 law passed after the widely criticized federal response to Hurricane Katrina that bars DHS from "substantially or significantly" reducing FEMA's authority or functions. The case is part of a broader lawsuit brought last year by the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions challenging mass layoffs across the federal workforce. In a separate finding, the judge faulted FEMA and DHS officials for discussing the staffing plan over the disappearing-message app Signal, saying she would presume the deleted texts "would have been unfavorable to defendants."
No penalty yet, but a hurricane season underway
The ruling does not immediately reinstate any positions or reverse the cuts already made. Illston ordered both sides to try to agree on a remedy and, failing that, to file a joint account of their remaining disagreements by October 9, after which she will decide what relief, if any, to order. DHS and FEMA did not respond to requests for comment from wire reporters Friday, though the agency has previously said it is working to become "leaner, faster and laser-focused" and insisted it is "ready for the 2026 hurricane season," which runs through November.
According to reporting on the case, the staffing plan originated with DHS officials late last year, over objections from FEMA's own leadership, and was echoed in a December draft from a Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council before the council's final report in May backed away from the specific 50 percent figure in favor of a vaguer "strategic review." The unions had first sued in the case last year, and Illston declined in June to block the cuts outright after finding FEMA had temporarily paused them.
The decision leaves DHS facing the prospect of a court-ordered staffing floor for the disaster agency just as forecasters track the peak weeks of hurricane season, and it hands ammunition to congressional critics who have warned that thinning FEMA's ranks could slow response times in future storms. Whether the administration appeals, or the two sides reach a settlement before the October deadline, will determine how much of the reduction ultimately survives. It is the latest in a string of judicial setbacks for the administration's approach to the federal workforce, coming days after a separate ruling voided a required political-loyalty essay for federal job applicants.
