On Friday, Rhode Island District Court Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. ’80 ruled that the Trump administration violated a March 6 preliminary injunction by freezing Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.
On Feb. 28, FEMA — a federal agency that provides funding to state and local governments in case of a natural disaster or emergency — sent notices to grant recipients stating that the agency is “conducting additional reviews of allocations before releasing funds for all grants.”
This manual review process attempts to ensure that FEMA’s “reimbursement payment requests” are “free from fraud, waste or abuse,” the Trump administration stated in a March 27 filing.
After issuing a temporary restraining order on Trump’s funding freeze on Jan. 31, McConnell issued an injunction on March 6 to further prevent the administration from implementing broad funding freezes. But as of March 12, “at least 215 FEMA grants to at least nineteen plaintiff states remain frozen or otherwise inaccessible,” according to the most recent lawsuit.
“Rhode Island’s FEMA grants, which support nearly a dozen grant programs, have been unavailable for more than thirty days,” plaintiffs claimed in the suit.
In his ruling Friday, McConnell argued that “FEMA’s manual review process violates the court’s preliminary injunction order” and continues to “covertly” follow Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order restricting “sanctuary jurisdictions” from receiving federal funding.
McConnell claimed that the administration’s manual review process is equivalent to an “indefinite pause” in funding.
The ruling orders the Trump administration to cease the manual review process and to not “pause or otherwise impede the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to the states.”
“With this order, we are confirming what we already know: the President is not above the law,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha stated in a press release.
In January, Neronha and 22 other attorneys general sued to block Trump’s funding freeze, The Herald previously reported. McConnell’s temporary restraining order was issued in response to this lawsuit.
“Enough is enough, and the Court has made that crystal clear,” Neronha continued in the press release.
The White House and FEMA did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment. Neronha’s office did not respond to The Herald’s request for additional comment.
