NJ Sues to Protect Homeland Security Funding from Politically Motivated Cuts

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin on Monday co-led a coalition of 12 state attorneys general in an emergency lawsuit asking a federal court to stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from reallocating homeland-security grant money that states say was taken for political reasons. The complaint asks the court to vacate the agencies’ last-minute reallocations and to issue immediate injunctive relief to preserve funding for front-line public-safety and preparedness programs.

Federal officials issued award notifications for the Fiscal Year 2025 Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP)—FEMA’s largest preparedness grant—on Sept. 27, four days before the statutory lapse of the funds. Plaintiffs say the agencies dramatically altered the HSGP allocations set out in the notice of funding opportunity, cutting roughly $233 million from the amounts the agencies had earlier signaled they would award to the affected states and reallocating that money to other jurisdictions. FEMA’s revisions reduced the pool slated for the states that filed the lawsuit from about $459 million under the NOFO to roughly $226 million, the complaint and subsequent news reports say.

New Jersey was among the states hit hard by the changes: the state’s HSGP allocation was reduced from roughly $18–19 million under the original NOFO to about $9.8 million in the award notifications, a nearly 50 percent cut, state officials and reporting show. The complaint and press filings argue the sudden reductions undermine critical counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and emergency-management work that HSGP is designed to support.

“The Trump Administration is playing games with the safety of our residents by illegally slashing Homeland Security Grant Program funding to New Jersey by 50%,” said Attorney General Platkin. “Until now, no administration has approached these grants – which protect New Jerseyans against terrorism, cyberattacks, and other critical safety issues – in a partisan manner. Now, after we stopped the Trump Administration from blocking all FEMA funding to New Jersey, they have decided to pivot and unlawfully reduce funding for homeland security preparedness. We are taking immediate legal action to fight this illegal and reckless cut and to fight for the safety of all New Jerseyans.”

Legal claims and immediate relief sought

In the suit, filed Sept. 29, 2025, in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the states allege DHS and FEMA violated the Administrative Procedure Act by deviating from statutorily required, risk-based allocation formulas and by acting without reasoned explanation. The complaint also asserts the reallocation is unlawful under the statutes that govern FEMA’s preparedness grants and that it amounts to impermissible conditioning of federal funds on compliance with the federal executive branch’s immigration-enforcement preferences. Plaintiffs are seeking a temporary restraining order and other injunctive relief to prevent the reallocation from taking effect while litigation proceeds.

The HSGP was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and is intended to help states prevent, prepare for and respond to terrorism and other hazards. Congress appropriated roughly $1.008 billion for HSGP in fiscal year 2025; HSGP funds are used to pay first-responder salaries, training, interoperable communications, fusion centers, cybersecurity exercises, and other preparedness activities that states say cannot be easily replaced if the federal money is diverted. The complaint stresses that those mission-critical programs rely on predictable, risk-based federal allocations rather than last-minute, discretionary adjustments.

Who joined the case

The complaint lists the State of New Jersey—represented by Attorney General Platkin—among the plaintiffs and identifies Illinois, California and Rhode Island as co-leaders of the filing. Attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington also joined the lawsuit. The filing frames the action as a defense of core public-safety funding that serves residents across all 12 jurisdictions.

Why the states say the cuts are unlawful

Plaintiffs contend the Reallocation Decision was taken for an improper purpose: to penalize states that decline to cooperate with the federal government’s stated immigration-enforcement priorities, effectively using homeland-security grants as leverage to advance unrelated federal policy goals. The complaint argues that FEMA and DHS must follow the statutory, risk-based allocation methods required by Congress and that unexplained last-minute changes to awards are arbitrary and capricious under the APA.

Next steps

The states requested emergency injunctive relief to preserve the original, risk-based allocations while the court considers the legal claims. At the time of the filing, plaintiffs had not ratified the award letters in FEMA’s award system, and the litigation asks the court to suspend or enjoin agency actions that would render the contested funds unavailable. Reporting indicates federal judges have moved quickly in related suits seeking to preserve FY-2025 preparedness grants.

Why this matters locally: HSGP and related preparedness grants fund training, communications and cyber-defense programs that state emergency managers and law enforcement rely on during disasters and public-safety incidents. The states’ challenge, led in part by New Jersey’s attorney general, frames the dispute as more than a budget fight—litigants say it is a test of whether federal grant programs will continue to be administered according to objective, congressionally mandated standards rather than shifted for political purposes.

Sources: complaint filed Sept. 29, 2025 in Illinois v. Noem (California Attorney General’s office / case filing) and contemporaneous reporting on the HSGP award notices and reallocation figures

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