Hawaiʻi attorney general joins AG coalition seeking to unfreeze FEMA funding

Attorney General Anne Lopez has joined a coalition of 22 other attorneys general in filing a motion seeking a court order to force the Trump administration to unfreeze essential funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In the motion, the coalition highlights that the Hawaiʻi Department of Human Services’ Disaster Case Management Program is being severely impacted by the funding freeze on programmatic funds and that the program could be forced to discontinue work as of April 4, 2025, if federal funding is not released.

The disaster management program is a FEMA-funded program that connects survivors of disasters with specially trained disaster case managers. They help fire survivors assess and address their disaster-related unmet needs, with services made available to all survivors impacted by the 2023 Maui wildfires. Case managers work with survivors to create unique disaster recovery plans that are individualized to each household, and include resources, decision-making priorities, guidance and tools. The managers act as a “quarterbacks” to help survivors navigate their recovery and work with the myriad of resources available to help survivors meet their needs.

The disaster management program relies on a team of more than 120 staff members across the Department of Human Services, its contracted provider. The provider’s subcontracted local community-based organizations that provide these crucial recovery services to the more than 6,300 survivors the disaster management team has assisted since November 2023. The team currently serves approximately 1,729 active cases, totaling more than 4,431 individuals.

Despite multiple court orders, including a preliminary injunction issued on March 6 blocking the Trump administration from unlawfully freezing federal funds, the administration continues to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to states from FEMA, including the disaster management program. The coalition filed a motion to enforce the preliminary injunction, seeking a court order requiring the administration to immediately unfreeze FEMA funds.

The administration’s funding freeze policy, issued through an array of actions including a Jan. 27 memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget, illegally withheld trillions of dollars in federal funds for states and other entities like nonprofit organizations and community health centers. In the days after the policy was first issued, states could not access Medicaid dollars. Most recently, withheld FEMA funds have jeopardized public safety, disaster response, and emergency preparedness throughout the country.

As the coalition asserts in the motion to enforce, further freezing of FEMA funds endangers the continuation of the disaster management program and its support for more than 4,000 survivors of the 2023 Maui wildfires. 

“There is a court order in place that prohibits FEMA from freezing, blocking, canceling, suspending, terminating, or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated funds to Hawaiʻi and other plaintiff states in accordance with a categorical pause or freeze of funding, yet FEMA has not complied,” Lopez said. “FEMA’s actions affect states across the nation — and the DCMP is an example of the serious consequences that can arise from abruptly changing how funds are disbursed.”

“The DCMP provides the comprehensive recovery support that our survivors need to rebuild their lives. This abrupt delay in disbursement of these critical funds essentially cripples our ability to sustain current operations,” said DHS Deputy Director Trista Speer. “This means the thousands of wildfire survivors we serve will be left without access to the support they need to navigate their complex recovery journeys.”

The state of Hawaiʻi is represented in this litigation by Special Assistant to the Attorney General Dave Day and Solicitor General Kalikoʻonālani Fernandes.

This effort is led by the attorneys general of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. Joining Lopez in the coalition are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.