Judge rules fired FEMA employees deserve relief

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Tim Evanson · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Department of Homeland Security unlawfully usurped FEMA's authority when it ordered a plan to cut the agency's staff from 23,000 to 11,500 employees, finding the action arbitrary, capricious, and beyond DHS's power.

In a separate order, the judge found that former FEMA official Karen Evans intentionally deleted Signal chats about the staffing plan with a DHS deputy chief of staff, in violation of federal law and agency policy, and ordered the government to pay attorney fees for uncovering the deletions.

The judge stopped short of deciding what relief fired employees are owed, ordering both sides to negotiate first. FEMA is not currently cutting staff while litigation continues, but is renewing its disaster-response workforce for shorter terms than before.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Here is what sticks with me: somebody sat down and decided the best way to handle a plan that halves a disaster agency was to make the chat messages about it disappear. That is the move of a man who spills paint on the carpet and then drags the couch over it. And now the same outfit is hiring its storm crews on shorter leashes, which tells you the plan did not die, it just got quieter.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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