SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Emergency Management Agency has begun offering new appointments to disaster workers whose contracts were not renewed in January, according to a notice submitted Friday evening to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The agency "initiated contact to offer new appointments to term-limited staff whose contracts expired the first three weeks of January," U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian wrote in the filing.

The affected workers belong to FEMA's Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees, known as CORE, who work on two- to four-year assignments. There are about 10,000 CORE employees, who together with other term-limited disaster workers make up roughly half of the agency's workforce.

At the start of 2026, FEMA stopped renewing some CORE employees' contracts as they expired and extended other appointments by only 90 days at a time. The agency paused the nonrenewals in late January. According to a sworn declaration by FEMA's temporary leader Karen S. Evans, 159 CORE employees had not been renewed by late January.

Under the new offers communicated to staff by email, CORE employees with contracts ending between January and May who were previously extended for 90 days may be reappointed for up to one year, along with those whose contracts end after May. Eligible FEMA reservists will be renewed for two years. Around 7,000 reservists in FEMA's surge workforce have contracts expiring on May 2.

A coalition led by the American Federation of Government Employees labor union sued the administration over the nonrenewals. The coalition alleged that the nonrenewals were part of a plan to cut FEMA's workforce by half and undermined the agency's congressional mandate to ensure the nation's disaster preparedness.

"There is no plan for 'blanket' elimination of COREs and the nonrenewals do not threaten FEMA's ability to perform its statutory mandate," Evans said in her sworn declaration. Plaintiffs' lawyers were scheduled to depose former Department of Homeland Security Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Guy the following week in an ongoing discovery effort around the decision-making that led to the CORE dismissals.

FEMA also reinstated 14 employees who had been on paid administrative leave for eight months after signing a public letter critiquing policies taken by FEMA and DHS.