Attorney General Bonta Asks Court to Enforce Order Preventing Trump Administration from Unlawfully Cutting Billions in Disaster Preparedness Funding

Motion asks court to require FEMA to restore critical disaster resilience program and make billions in funding available to the communities relying on them

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia in filing a motion asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to enforce its December 11, 2025 order that prohibited the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from terminating the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and directed the agency to promptly take all steps necessary to reverse the termination. 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 and community resilience, the program has saved lives, reduced injury, protected property, and saved money that would have otherwise been spent on post-disaster costs.   

“FEMA’s BRIC program is critical. It has earned bipartisan support because the funding helps communities prepare for disasters before they strike,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Late last year, my fellow attorneys general and I successfully blocked the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to shut down the BRIC program. We are now returning to court to ensure that the order we secured is fully enforced. We need to know why there’s been a failure to comply — it is unacceptable.”   

On July 16, 2025, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition filed a lawsuit to prevent FEMA from terminating its BRIC program — an action that had already delayed, scaled back, and cancelled hundreds of mitigation projects across the country depending on this funding. On December 11, 2025, the coalition won their case. The court declared the termination of this congressionally mandated program unlawful and ordered FEMA to promptly take all steps necessary to reverse the termination.  

Over two months have passed and the federal government has offered no indication that they have complied with the court order. FEMA’s regional offices lack information about whether and when it will resume the BRIC program, and some have indicated that FEMA is taking a “wait and see” approach — contrary to the clear terms of the court’s order. During this time, the federal government has not identified any concrete steps that it has taken to reverse the BRIC termination.  

Attorney General Bonta and the coalition are asking the court to enforce the December 11 order by requiring the federal government to make pre-disaster mitigation funds available as required by statute, communicate the status and next steps for current BRIC projects to the states, communicate the reversal of the BRIC termination to all relevant stakeholders, and file status reports with the court outlining any actions taken or planned to comply with the order.  

Over the past four years, FEMA has selected nearly 2,000 projects to receive roughly $4.5 billion in BRIC funding nationwide. In California, projects that have been awarded funding include: 

• A project in City of Rancho Palos Verdes to reduce geologic landslide movement that threatens most of the City’s residents and infrastructure, including a major arterial roadway that provides community and emergency access, sanitation sewer lines located along this roadway, electric and communication lines, potable water lines, and gas lines. Without this project, landslide movement will continue to threaten critical infrastructure, damage homes and property, and endanger lives. 
• A project in the City of Sacramento to mitigate flooding of five major interchanges, 3.9 miles of a major interstate highway, a runway at an airport, surface streets, 27,000 housing units, and more. Among other things, the project would have improved floodwall sections, improved levee sections, and relocated a pump station. 
• A project in Kern County to seismically retrofit the Kern Valley Healthcare District’s hospital that provides acute care and emergency medical services to a remote population in the mid-northern region of the Kern River Valley area. Unless seismically retrofitted, the hospital may soon need to close. This would force hundreds of thousands of Californians to seek services at hospitals over two hours away.

Joining Attorney General Bonta in filing this motion are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington, and the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.