A federal judge in California sided with a labor union on Friday in its lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying the Department of Homeland Security “arbitrarily” moved to slash the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s staff by 50% earlier this year.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled that DHS acted “capriciously” when it revoked FEMA’s long-standing authority to renew contracts for its Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery, or CORE employees. CORE employees are on-the-ground contacts who are dispatched across the country and remain in communities years after a disaster.
CORE employees have traditionally comprised around 40% of FEMA’s staff. Several workers previously told The Washington Sun that gutting the office would compromise essential recovery efforts in the aftermath of a disaster.
Illston said in her ruling that the government didn’t present any evidence that suggested DHS had used “reasoned decisionmaking” when conducting the mass firings.
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“The record instead reflects that DHS was exempt from the President’s hiring freeze but then interpreted ‘new hires’ under the hiring freeze to include FEMA CORE term renewals,” Illston, a Clinton appointee, wrote. “The record also reflects that revoking FEMA’s CORE renewal authority impeded FEMA’s ability to perform its functions.”
Illston wrote that evidence in the case appeared to show the staffing cuts were helmed by former DHS leaders Joseph Guy and Kara Voorhies, as well as Karen Evans, who recently returned to the department to lead a fraud task force. Voorhies, who left her position as a FEMA contractor in the spring, has been under scrutiny by lawmakers from both parties for allegedly having an outsized role in managing FEMA contracts.
The court also found that Guy, Voorhies and Evans improperly used auto-delete features on the secure messaging application Signal to discuss staffing reductions.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Illston’s ruling.
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