Attorney General Neronha co-leads lawsuit to stop unlawful conditions on critical emergency grants

Attorney General Neronha co-leads lawsuit to stop unlawful conditions on critical emergency grants

Published on Thursday, July 23, 2026

Attorney General Peter F. Neronha today co-led a coalition of 24 attorneys general and two governors in filing a lawsuit challenging decisions by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to impose unlawful conditions on billions of dollars in federal funds that Congress appropriated to states for emergencies and natural disasters, including acts of terrorism.

The conditions challenged in the lawsuit would require the states to change the way they conduct elections, including by transmitting lists of all registered voters to DHS, and to assist DHS in enforcing federal immigration law. They would also permit DHS to terminate any federal grant at any time and for any reason.

"Once again, the Trump Administration is threatening to jeopardize public safety by unlawfully withholding billions in critical funding; and once again, they won't get away with it," said Attorney General Neronha. "This Administration is using the safety of Americans as collateral by attempting to bully the states into relinquishing their constitutional right to enact policies and laws that best serve their residents. Moreover, Congress allocated these funds to the states for preparing for and responding to emergencies including counterterrorism and natural disasters, and the executive branch has no legal say in the matter. Federal emergency funding cannot and will not be held hostage from states who are lawfully resisting the President's illegal attempts to force them into compliance. We'll make sure of it."

Attorney General Neronha co-led two similar and successful lawsuits in 2025, each in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, challenging efforts by DHS to condition billions in federal emergency funding on states' agreement to enforce federal immigration law and attempting to unlawfully reallocate federal homeland security funding away from jurisdictions it viewed as insufficiently supportive of the President's political agenda.

Now, DHS and FEMA have established grant conditions for 2026 funding that again attempt to coerce the states into complying with the administration's policy priorities. The conditions in total affect billions of dollars in funding, including over a billion dollars in Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) funding that states use to support security measures and protect residents from terrorism, cyberattacks and more. Rhode Island receives more than $4.3 million in HSGP funding each year for state and municipal efforts to prevent, prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism.

First, DHS and FEMA have again threatened to impose the same immigration conditions that they attempted to impose in 2025 on all federal grant programs. The conditions would require states to devote scarce law-enforcement resources to assisting DHS in enforcing federal immigration law. These conditions were found to be unlawful and were enjoined by a district judge last year.

Second, DHS and FEMA threaten to withhold 20% of each state's counterterrorism funding if states do not change state election law to conform to the administration's policy goals. The attorneys general assert that these requirements would force states to abandon years of work and millions of dollars of investments in their elections systems, all to obtain unrelated funding that Congress earmarked for the prevention of terrorist attacks.

Specifically, the challenged funding conditions would require states to transition to paper-ballot systems, conduct a mandatory 5% manual audit of voting systems, reconcile voters and ballots using a methodology DHS has not disclosed, and use DHS's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to verify the citizenship of every election worker and every registered voter in state's voter databases. If states do not comply, DHS and FEMA will withhold at least 20% of each state's HSGP funding.

Finally, the challenged funding conditions unlawfully claim effectively unfettered power to terminate these grants on a whim. The agencies are attempting to add a condition that would allow FEMA to terminate any grant program for any reason. This constant threat of termination undermines the stability and reliability that these critical programs rely on to be effective.

The attorneys general argue that the grant conditions violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution's Spending Clause.

Joining Attorney General Neronha in this lawsuit are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

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