Attorney General Ellison secures court victory preventing Trump administration from unlawfully cutting billions in disaster preparedness funding
Court order prevents Trump administration from illegally shutting down the FEMA BRIC program
December 11, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Attorney General Ellison and a coalition of 22 other states today won their lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its unlawful attempt to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) bipartisan Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, designed to protect communities from natural disasters before they strike.
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, the program protects lives, communities, and property — supporting state, tribal, and local governments to prevent the harms of disasters, rather than just recovering from them.
"I am extremely pleased to have prevented the Trump Administration from cutting essential disaster preparedness funding from Minnesota to fund Trump’s tax breaks for billionaires,” said Attorney General Ellison. “However, it is absurd that we even had to file this lawsuit. Congress created the BRIC program to help states prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters, and President Trump cannot simply order an end to that program. As I have said before, I do not wake up in the morning looking for reasons to sue Donald Trump. However, if his administration continues to violate the law and harm the people of Minnesota, then they leave me no choice but to take them to court.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed a law mandating that FEMA must protect communities through four interrelated functions – mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery. The BRIC program is the core of FEMA’s mitigation efforts. BRIC projects are required to be cost-effective, and a recent study concluded that every dollar FEMA spends on mitigation saves an average of six dollars in post-disaster costs.
The BRIC program supports difficult-to-fund projects, such as constructing evacuation shelters and flood walls, safeguarding utility grids against wildfires, protecting wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, and fortifying bridges, roadways, and culverts.
Over the past four years, FEMA has selected nearly 2,000 projects to receive roughly $4.5 billion in BRIC funding nationwide. In Minnesota, BRIC funding is used by counties to update their hazard mitigation plans. The funding the Trump administration attempted to terminate was slated to support thirty-four Minnesota counties in updating their current plans.
On July 16, 2025, Attorney General Ellison and a coalition of other attorneys general filed their lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to shut down the BRIC program. On August 5, the coalition won a preliminary injunction in that lawsuit.
Today’s court decision affirms the coalition’s position that FEMA’s decision to abruptly terminate the BRIC program is in direct violation of Congress’s decision to fund it, and that the Executive Branch has no lawful authority to unilaterally refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress. The judge also concluded that FEMA’s actions violate Separation of Powers, the Appropriations and Spending Clauses, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The decision prevents FEMA from terminating the BRIC program and requires the restoration of these critical funds to the communities relying on them.
Joining Attorney General Ellison in filing this lawsuit, which was co-led by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and the governors of Kentucky and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
