Attorney General co-led a multistate coalition that filed an amicus brief on Nov. 5, 2026 asking the D.C. Circuit to refuse FEMA’s request to stay a district court judgment that blocked election-related conditions attached to federal counterterrorism grants.
The brief supports a challenge brought by six local governments that won in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; FEMA appealed and asked the D.C. Circuit to let it enforce the conditions while the appeal proceeds, and the brief urges the court to deny that request.
The conditions would require recipients of Homeland Security Grant Program funding to take actions tied to the President’s election agenda; the brief cites requirements such as adopting hand-marked paper ballots and using the SAVE Act database to verify voter eligibility.
California and the coalition say complying with FEMA’s conditions would interfere with the States’ constitutional authority over federal elections and would be exorbitantly expensive and disruptive to how elections are run; the brief makes those arguments in the municipalities’ case, Nashville v. DHS.
The attorney general said, “The Trump Administration is once again making the safety of our communities collateral damage in its partisan agenda,” and argued that counterterrorism funding is meant to protect communities, not to advance election-related policy changes.
The brief accompanies a separate lawsuit California filed in July 2026 that challenges the same conditions; the press release says California receives $150 million in HSGP funding each year and that FEMA has recently tried to use grant money to extract unrelated policy changes from states.
Attorney General Bonta and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul lead the filing on behalf of the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the Governor of Kentucky.
The D.C. Circuit has not yet ruled on FEMA’s stay request; the brief asks the court to prevent FEMA from enforcing the contested conditions while the appeal proceeds.
State
Rob Bonta
Attorney General · Democrat
Named 3 times in this story.
Portrait: Official portrait
Sources & methodology
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