Judge rules Trump administration order to fire FEMA staffers was illegal

Federal Judge Finds FEMA Staffing Cuts Unlawful

Activelifezero.com – A federal court has ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully when it moved to sharply reduce the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s workforce by limiting renewals for its on-call disaster personnel. The ruling represents a significant development for FEMA employees and labor unions challenging the administration’s approach to reshaping the agency.

US District Judge Susan Illston, who sits in Northern California, concluded Friday that the Department of Homeland Security acted without an adequately reasoned basis when it withdrew FEMA’s authority to renew contracts for its Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery workers. Those employees, commonly called CORE staff, form roughly 40% of FEMA’s workforce and play a central role during major emergencies.

CORE teams are frequently among the first federal personnel sent to areas affected by hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other disasters. Their duties can include helping oversee aid distribution and supporting long-term recovery funding for states, local governments, and communities. Their contracts have generally run for two to four years and were routinely renewed in the past.

Administration Sought to Reduce FEMA’s Size

The dispute grew out of a broader 2025 effort by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal government. DHS limited FEMA’s CORE contract extensions to 180-day periods while considering a longer-term strategy for downsizing the agency. In January, DHS directed FEMA to allow at least some contracts to expire rather than renewing them, a step that would remove workers as their appointments ended.

The administration has argued that FEMA is ineffective, politically biased, and overly large. Its proposed changes have also reflected a desire to assign more responsibility for disaster preparation, response, and recovery to individual states. Yet FEMA has faced staffing concerns for years: a 2023 Government Accountability Office report found that the agency had a shortfall exceeding 6,000 employees.

Although FEMA operates within DHS, Congress established protections for the agency’s mission in a 2006 law. The statute says the homeland security secretary may not make a substantial or significant reduction in FEMA’s authorities, responsibilities, or functions.

Illston noted that DHS was not subject to President Donald Trump’s January 2025 hiring freeze. However, the department later treated FEMA CORE contract renewals as though they were new hires under that policy. The judge found no documented explanation sufficient to support the reversal in the department’s position.

“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.”

Deleted Signal Messages Also Draw Rebuke

The court’s rulings also addressed the handling of communications by former acting FEMA head Karen Evans and former DHS deputy chief of staff Joseph Guy. Illston found that their use of Signal, an encrypted messaging application, violated federal law and department policy in circumstances connected to the case.

Evans created a Signal group chat that appeared likely to contain material relevant to the lawsuit, the judge wrote. The messages were configured to disappear automatically after four weeks. After Evans became a defendant in the litigation in March, she shortened the automatic deletion period.

Evans made a backup of her Signal messages in April 2026, but the judge said the most relevant and timely communications had already disappeared by then. Illston determined that Evans’ conduct was intentional and emphasized that her prior DHS responsibilities made the issue especially serious.

“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.”

As a consequence, the administration cannot rely in later proceedings on earlier testimony denying plans to drastically reduce FEMA staffing or denying DHS involvement in the effort. The court said it will assume that the missing messages would have harmed the defendants’ position because they could have provided additional evidence of the staffing plan, DHS control, and actions taken to implement it.

Unions Win Key Stage of Challenge

The American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO brought the lawsuit, and the decision gives the unions an important victory. The ruling does not yet settle every question about what the government must do next.

The unions had requested that all non-renewal notices issued to CORE employees since the beginning of the year be withdrawn. They also sought the return of affected employees to their jobs and an order preventing FEMA from carrying out a plan to reduce its workforce by 50%.

Illston did not immediately impose those remedies. She said the requested relief could be too broad because FEMA was no longer systematically declining to renew CORE contracts. Instead, the judge directed the parties to work toward an agreement defining the appropriate scope of relief.

The next phase will determine how the ruling affects employees whose contracts were allowed to lapse and whether additional court action is needed to protect FEMA’s operational capacity. For communities facing future disasters, the outcome could shape how quickly federal personnel are available when large-scale emergencies overwhelm state and local resources.