Federal Judge Finds FEMA Staffing Cuts Were Unlawful
Goldlaner.com – A federal court has ruled that the Trump administration acted illegally when it moved to sharply reduce the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s workforce by limiting renewals for thousands of disaster-response employees.
US District Judge Susan Illston, sitting in Northern California, concluded Friday that the Department of Homeland Security acted without an adequately reasoned basis when it withdrew FEMA’s ability to renew contracts for its Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery employees, widely known as CORE staffers. The ruling gives a significant boost to the unions challenging the staffing decisions.
CORE personnel represent roughly 40% of FEMA’s workforce. They are commonly among the first federal responders sent to major emergencies, including hurricanes and other large-scale disasters. Their work can include coordinating assistance, overseeing aid distribution, and helping states and communities manage recovery funding over the longer term.
Contract renewals were restricted
For years, CORE employees generally worked under appointments lasting between two and four years, with renewals occurring in most cases. During the administration’s broader 2025 push to reduce the size of the federal government, DHS changed that approach. FEMA was limited to renewing CORE appointments in 180-day increments while the department considered a longer-range strategy for reducing the agency.
In January, DHS instructed FEMA to allow at least some of those contracts to expire, a step that would force workers from their jobs once their terms ended. The policy was part of a wider effort to reshape FEMA, reduce its staffing, and place more disaster-response and recovery duties on state governments.
The administration has maintained that FEMA is inefficient, overly large, and politically biased. That argument stands against a 2023 Government Accountability Office finding that FEMA faced a shortage of more than 6,000 employees.
Although FEMA operates within DHS, Congress imposed limits on how much the department can weaken the disaster agency. A 2006 law states that the homeland security secretary cannot substantially or significantly reduce FEMA’s authorities, responsibilities, or functions.
Illston noted that DHS itself was exempted from President Donald Trump’s January 2025 federal hiring freeze. Even so, the department treated CORE contract renewals as though they were new hires covered by the freeze.
“There is no evidence in the record reflecting reasoned decision for this about-face or for the subsequent conditions DHS placed on FEMA’s renewal authority.”
The judge determined that DHS had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in taking away FEMA’s renewal authority. The decision does not merely concern an internal personnel policy: the affected workers help form the deployable capacity FEMA relies on when disasters require a rapid federal presence.
Deleted Signal messages draw separate rebuke
Illston also issued a separate ruling involving messages exchanged through Signal, an encrypted communications application, by former acting FEMA administrator Karen Evans and former DHS deputy chief of staff Joseph Guy.
The court found that Evans created a Signal group that appeared likely to contain information relevant to the lawsuit. Messages in the group were set to disappear automatically after four weeks. In March, after Evans had become a defendant in the case, she shortened the deletion setting.
Evans made a backup of her Signal messages in April 2026. By then, Illston wrote, the messages most relevant in time had already been deleted. The judge concluded that Evans’ conduct was intentional.
“Evans should have known better,” Illston wrote. “She previously served as Chief Information Officer at DHS, in charge of the agency’s records preservation policies.”
The loss of those messages will affect how the case proceeds. Illston prohibited the administration from relying in later proceedings on earlier testimony denying plans for major FEMA staffing reductions or denying DHS involvement in the decisions.
The court also said it would assume that the unavailable Signal messages would have harmed the defendants’ position.
“the Court will presume that the lost Signal messages would have been unfavorable to Defendants because they would have been further evidence of Defendants’ plan, DHS’s control, and Defendants’ implementing actions.”
What the ruling means
The decisions favor the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO, which brought the lawsuit. The case highlights the tension between an administration’s ability to reorganize executive agencies and legal protections established by Congress for agencies with specific public-safety responsibilities.
FEMA’s workforce structure is especially consequential because disaster operations depend on personnel who can be deployed quickly, often across state lines and under difficult conditions. CORE employees have historically supplied an important share of that surge capacity while also supporting recovery efforts after the immediate emergency phase has ended.
A FEMA spokesperson said the agency still has experienced leaders and support personnel across its headquarters and regional offices.
“We’re ensuring workforce stability and a strong, deployable force for upcoming national events and potential disasters; making the agency leaner, faster and laser-focused on supporting state, local, tribal and territorial partners before, during and after disasters,” the spokesperson said.
Illston did not yet decide what remedy the government must provide for the unlawful staffing actions. Instead, she directed the parties to work toward an agreement on that issue. The next stage of the case will determine how the ruling is translated into practical consequences for FEMA employees, the agency’s renewal practices, and its future disaster-response capacity.
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