Judge sides with WA in dispute over $4M grant canceled during DOGE-era

A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday ruled the Trump administration wrongfully terminated a $4 million grant for Washington meant to provide services for new migrants.

The case is somewhat of a blast from the past, as it deals with the Trump administration’s withholding of federal funding under the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by Elon Musk.

Since 2019, Congress has tasked the Federal Emergency Management Agency with doling out grants for shelter and other services for migrants recently released from U.S. Department of Homeland Security custody. President Donald Trump signed a version of the program into law in his first term. The goal partially was to alleviate overcrowding in short-term federal holding facilities.

Between 2022 and 2024, amid the war in Ukraine and the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, more than 45,000 migrants arrived in Washington, according to court documents. Many of them were seeking humanitarian relief, like asylum. But the state’s housing system was already stretched thin. Hundreds of migrants camped on the property of a Tukwila church due to the lack of other resources, for example. 

To help these newcomers, Washington started a program in 2024 with $25 million in state funding. The money went toward shelter, access to food, water and medical care as well as hygiene supplies. The state also received $4 million from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program to support the effort. Washington planned to disburse funding to the city of Tukwila, Seattle and King County’s public health agency, and Seattle nonprofit Mary’s Place, with hopes of serving 525 migrants per day.

The money, for instance, would’ve supported the health department’s culturally relevant care for migrants living in encampments and hotels. 

But in February 2025, less than a month after Trump took office, the feds zeroed out the funding, and in March told state officials that Washington was out of compliance with the grant’s requirements, citing without evidence “significant concerns that SSP funding is going to entities engaged in or facilitating illegal activities.” 

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, later told the state that programs like this seeking to support noncitizens don’t align with the administration’s focus on immigration enforcement and “do not effectuate the agency’s current priorities.”

At that point, the state hadn’t gotten any of the $4 million.

Across the country, FEMA clawed back more than $885 million in previously awarded funds, according to court papers.

Washington had sued last July to get its $4 million reinstated, arguing the move was illegal under the Administrative Procedures Act and the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers.

The Trump administration argued Congress gave FEMA discretion over how to use the funding, including whether to fund particular services for noncitizens.

In September, the Government Accountability Office found FEMA was illegally withholding the congressionally authorized money.

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein agreed, writing Tuesday that the funding termination was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“Defendants did not merely fail to support their allegations; they also failed to explain why unsupported concerns about possible misuse of funds justified eliminating a congressionally funded program rather than using available compliance tools to address any actual, recipient-specific violations,” wrote Rothstein, who was nominated for the bench by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Rothstein’s order restores the state’s ability to submit requests for federal reimbursements, but doesn’t force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to approve them. 

The ruling only says the federal government can’t reject funding requests on these grounds.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown has sued the Trump administration 60 times since January 2025.