Attorneys argued Tuesday over whether a federal judge should block the Trump administration from potentially shrinking the number of disaster relief workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency by the thousands.
A group of unions and local governments is asking the court to stop the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, which is part of DHS, from separating those workers from federal employment and prohibit the agencies from carrying out “any further reduction of any FEMA employee positions.”
Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California opened the hearing by saying her “preliminary view” was to deny the request for a preliminary injunction. She said there was not enough evidence about whether DHS ordered FEMA to make staffing cuts and whether those types of disaster relief workers were historically renewed on supervisor recommendations.
Illston also added that the unions and governments were looking for “extraordinary relief.” She ended the hearing without making a ruling from the bench.
At issue is a category of disaster relief employee at FEMA known as CORE, the Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees.
Those types of employees — which make up about 40 percent of FEMA workers, according to one former official — are intended “to work across disasters” instead of being brought on for a specific one, according to the filing.
CORE workers are full-time and brought on for terms of two to four years, with the agency able to renew the workers according to its needs, according to a court filing from the unions and local governments.
Their employment had historically been “routinely renewed,” the plaintiffs say, with CORE employee renewals being greenlit by FEMA supervisors and without DHS involvement.
But the plaintiffs argue that precedent has been thrown out, arguing DHS has asserted control over FEMA’s ability to renew CORE workers.
The plaintiffs have accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of defying a now-lapsed congressional layoff moratorium and disregarding FEMA’s statutory mandate by ordering the rolling separations of FEMA workers, with the aim of cutting the agency’s staff in half this year.
In court Tuesday, Danielle Leonard, an attorney for the union plaintiffs, accused the Trump administration of violating a 2006 law enacted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (PL 109-295).
The plaintiffs say that law bolstered FEMA independence from DHS decision-making and banned the head of DHS from substantially reducing the authorities of FEMA. Leonard told the judge they think there’s enough evidence that DHS is “calling the shots,” something she argued violates the 2006 law.
She also pointed to a declaration in which Karen Evans, who is serving as the senior official performing the duties of administrator for FEMA, said that DHS “has final authority over non-renewal decisions.”
Leonard said the plan to cut further CORE employees is “imminent and real,” and “very concerning.”
Robert Bombard, an attorney for the Justice Department, said there was an overhaul that came post-Katrina, but those changes are “far afield” from the situation at play.
The changes were aimed at protecting FEMA’s emergency management mission, he argued.
Bombard equated the situation to a personnel decision about a subset of workers and said that subset has seen a significant jump in personnel over the last decade. He also argued that Congress has never mandated the government have a certain baseline number of those employees.
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