A ruling last week from U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington, D.C., concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) violated Hurricane Katrina victims' constitutional rights to due process by failing to provide them with appropriate explanations before terminating their disaster housing assistance. Additionally, FEMA was ordered to reinstate short-term housing payments.

The issue of notification began in Feb. 2006 when FEMA attempted to transfer victims from a short-term rental assistance program implemented soon after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast region last year. The transfer involved moving victims from the short-term program to FEMA's longer-term housing program, which would have only provided up to 18 months of housing assistance. The communication letters sent out by FEMA were accused of being "unnecessarily vague" and created a "significant risk of erroneous deprivations of property interest," according to Judge Leon. Many who received letters ultimately were denied acceptance into the long-term program, effectively ending their federal aid.

"It is unfortunate, if not incredible, that FEMA and its counsel could not devise a sufficient notice system to spare these beleaguered evacuees the added burden of federal litigation to vindicate their constitutional rights," said Judge Leon, in his memorandum opinion issued on Nov. 29, 2006. He continued by saying, "FEMA's notice provisions are unconstitutionally vague and uninformative, and a more detailed statement of FEMA's reasons for denying long-term housing benefits, including the factual and/or statutory basis for the decision, must be provided in order to: (1) diminish the risk of erroneous deprivation; (2) restore the appellate review process to the valuable safeguard it was intended to be; and (3) free these evacuees from the 'Kafkaesque' application process they had to endure."