More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration Thursday in federal court in Rhode Island, challenging new FEMA and Department of Homeland Security grant conditions.
The complaint alleges the administration is requiring states to change their election systems and to help DHS with immigration enforcement and that the conditions would allow DHS to terminate grants 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," Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.
The states argue putting conditions on congressionally appropriated funding violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution’s spending clause, the filing says, and a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit says the administration has used the strategy on education funding, domestic violence grants and highway funding, and that courts have repeatedly found the approach unlawful and unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. wrote last year: "The States face losing billions of dollars in federal funding, are being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers, are at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities, and will have to scale back, reconsider, or cancel ongoing transportation projects," when he barred Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy from cutting off transportation funds to states that did not comply with immigration enforcement actions.
The latest filing challenges requirements that states transition to paper-ballot systems, conduct a manual audit of voting systems, reconcile voters and verify the citizenship of every registered voter in the state’s voter databases, and it says states that fail to comply risk losing at least 20% of their Homeland Security Grant Program funding.
The complaint says that Homeland Security Grant Program money is used to fund measures to protect citizens from cyberattacks and terrorism.
The lawsuit argues the administration is attempting to apply some of the same conditions to 2026 funding after failing to do so with funding last year.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote; repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud, and Trump has said he wants to "take over" election administration in Democratic areas.