Sneak Preview: Court Sets Timelines on FEMA’s Plans for BRIC Program
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) A judge in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts recently set certain timelines for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to tell the court when the agency will reverse its plan to terminate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and to issue new notices of funding opportunity (NOFOs).
The court on Dec. 11, 2025, ruled in favor of more than 20 states that sought to overturn FEMA’s termination of BRIC award funding (see “Court Tells FEMA To Reinstate BRIC Funding”). Funded through congressional appropriations under the Stafford Act (42 U.S.C. §5133(i)) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (Pub. L. 117-58), the BRIC program provides funding to applicants that identify mitigation actions and projects that reduce risks posed by natural hazards.
In April 2025, FEMA issued a memorandum intended to “provide a new direction for the program,” adding that it would cancel the federal fiscal year (FY) 2024 BRIC notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) and decline awarding BRIC projects selected but not awarded across all fiscal years, and refuse to allow additional period of performance extensions without FEMA prior approval.
FEMA soon followed this memo with a press release stating that it was ending the BRIC program and would immediately move any funds that had not yet been distributed either to FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund or return them to the U.S. Treasury. Since then, FEMA has neither issued a replacement FY 2024 or FY 2025 NOFO, nor obligated funding to projects previously identified for further review but not formally awarded.
A group of mostly Democratic-leaning states and the District of Columbia sued FEMA in July 2025, accusing the agency and the Department of Homeland Security of violating the Administrative Procedure Act and several clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in August 2025 issued a preliminary injunction preventing FEMA from redirecting funds allocated under the program until the court could render a final judgment on the case. Stearns noted at the time that it was not convinced that Congress vested in the agency any discretion to re-allocate funds from the BRIC account. While FEMA argued at the time that it had not, in fact, ended the BRIC program or cancelled any grants, “the states’ evidence of steps taken by FEMA to implement the announced termination portend the conclusion that a determination has in fact been made, and the FEMA is inching towards a fait accompli,” Stearns explained.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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