SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration broke the law when the Department of Homeland Security steered the Federal Emergency Management Agency toward cutting its workforce roughly in half and seized key personnel decisions from the disaster agency, Reuters and Newsweek reported Sept. 12, 2026.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco, in a decision issued late Friday, Sept. 11, said DHS “acted unlawfully in usurping FEMA’s authority” over its own staffing, Reuters reported. While FEMA sits inside DHS, the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2005 says the department “may not substantially or significantly reduce … the authorities, responsibilities, or functions of” FEMA — language Illston applied to the staffing takeover, according to Reuters and The Hill.

Unions and other plaintiffs sued after DHS moved last year to stop FEMA from renewing temporary Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees (CORE) contracts and directed a plan to shrink staffing from about 23,000 toward roughly 11,500, Newsweek and Reuters reported. Illston wrote there was “no evidence in the record reflecting reasoned decision-making for this about-face or for the subsequent conditions DHS placed on FEMA’s renewal authority,” Reuters quoted.

Friday’s order resolved the core legal claims in the plaintiffs’ favor but did not immediately reinstate workers, impose penalties, or lock in permanent relief. Illston ordered the parties to meet and confer; if they cannot agree, they must file a joint statement by Oct. 9 on what relief remains outstanding, Reuters and Newsweek said. FEMA and DHS did not immediately comment Saturday, Reuters reported.

Illston, a Clinton appointee, had declined in June to immediately block the cuts after finding FEMA had at least temporarily backed off. On Friday she said FEMA still projected fiscal-year staffing near 11,383 — about half of prior levels — “without any basis for choosing that number,” Reuters reported. In a related ruling she faulted FEMA and DHS officials for discussing cuts on Signal on personal phones and deleting those messages, writing she would presume the lost messages would have been unfavorable to the government, Reuters said.

President Donald Trump has argued states should take more disaster responsibility and has previously suggested FEMA could be abolished; plaintiffs argued the cuts would undermine FEMA’s core mission and were ordered from above FEMA rather than initiated inside the agency, per Reuters. Democracy Forward, representing plaintiffs, said Congress designed FEMA to operate with independence for rapid disaster response, Reuters reported.

Dated Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026: Illston holds DHS’s FEMA staffing takeover and half-workforce plan unlawful; remedies still to be decided next month.

Sources