U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns attends the Investiture Ceremony for U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy at the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., September 17, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully terminated a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program designed to protect states and communities against natural disasters before they occur.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston sided with 20 mostly Democratic-led states in finding that the Republican president's administration lacked authority to end the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and use money Congress approved to support it for other purposes.

The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, announced in April it would end the program, calling it wasteful, ineffective and politicized.

But Stearns, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the administration's action amounted to an "unlawful executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose."

"The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives," Stearns wrote. "It need not be gainsaid that the imminence of disasters is not deterred by bureaucratic obstruction."

Stearns at an earlier stage in the case in August blocked FEMA from diverting more than $4 billion allocated to BRIC and spending it on other purposes.

On Thursday, he blocked the program from being canceled without approval of Congress and ordered FEMA to promptly take all steps necessary to reverse its termination.

“Today's court order will undoubtedly save lives by preventing the federal government from terminating funding that helps communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat who co-led the case, said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The BRIC program is the largest pre-disaster mitigation program offered through FEMA. It helps state and local governments protect major infrastructure such as roads and bridges before the occurrence of floods, hurricanes and other disasters.

According to the lawsuit, FEMA approved about $4.5 billion in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, primarily in coastal states, over the last four years.

States led by Washington and Massachusetts sued in July, saying that the end of the BRIC program had devastating impacts on communities nationally, forcing them to delay, scale back or cancel hundreds of disaster mitigation projects.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis)