(WKYT) – Gov. Andy Beshear joined 25 states and Washington, D.C. in a lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuit alleges the agencies have set conditions on millions of dollars in disaster-preparedness and homeland security grants that would require states to adopt election and immigration policies aligned with the Trump Administration.
[READ FULL LAWSUIT BELOW]
The conditions for the Homeland Security Grant Program would require states to verify the citizenship of all individuals in state voter databases using a “faulty” federal system, transition to equipment that reads hand-marked paper ballots and more, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says the Constitution gives states the power to administer and set rules governing federal elections, and that states have adopted a range of systems to count votes fairly and accurately.
“Defendants, however, seek to upend those laws and policies and—using hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds as a cudgel—impose the current Administration’s preferred policies in their place,” the lawsuit reads.
DHS has included a set of conditions regarding immigration, according to the lawsuit. DHS and FEMA also reportedly imposed new terms that grant FEMA the authority to terminate funds to states at any time based on alignment with “agency priorities.”
Last year, the lawsuit claims FEMA and DHS attempted to leverage billions in federal funding “to coerce States into adopting the Administration’s preferred policies.”
A federal court previously vacated immigration conditions set forth by the agencies, calling it unconstitutional “economic dragooning,” the lawsuit says.
“Frustrated by the court’s judgment, DHS and FEMA simply cut millions of dollars in funding from jurisdictions they viewed as hostile to the President’s immigration agenda,” the lawsuit reads. “This Court enjoined that action, too, explaining that ‘[t]o hold hostage funding for programs like these based solely on what appear to be [d]efendants’ political whims is unconscionable and, at least here, unlawful.’”