The Federal Emergency Management Agency is objecting in vehementlanguage to the lawsuit filed by the state of Mississippi thatseeks to delay the immediate implementation of flood insurance ratehikes.

Mississippi argues in its suit that it is an aggrieved party. Itargues it has jurisdiction to file the lawsuit because theaffordability study that the state alleges that FEMA must providebefore implementing the rate hikes must go to the states.

However, FEMA, in a brief filed late Monday with a FederalDistrict Court in Gulfport, Miss., says the report Mississippi isdemanding is to go to Congress, “not to plaintiff.”

The Mississippi Insurance Department “has no procedural right tocompletion of the report,” the FEMA brief says.

The brief reiterated in explicit terms testimony by W. CraigFugate, FEMA administrator, before Congress that the law only givesCongress the authority to delay or otherwise forestall the ratehikes.

Moreover, the brief says, the Mississippi Insurance Department“likewise cannot show redressability because only Congress canremedy the department's claimed harm.”

The brief also says Mississippi is wrong in stating that theaffordability report must be sent to Congress before the rates areimplemented.

The affordability study mandated by the 2012 Biggert-Waters Actrequires FEMA to have a study conducted by the National Academy ofSciences. The purpose of the study, according to the law, is aimedat identifying “methods to aid individuals to afford risk-basedpremiums under the National Flood Insurance Program throughtargeted assistance rather than generally subsidized rates,including means-tested vouchers,” FEMA says in the brief.

FEMA states, though, that nothing in the provision mandating thestudy “requires Congress to consider the information in the report,let alone to use it to change the way premium rate increases areimplemented,” the brief says.

FEMA lawyers argue that even if the study were completed, theagency “would still only have the authority to implement suchmethods if new legislation is enacted.”

The brief argues that unlike the contentions of Mississippi andother states that have filed friend of the court briefs in thesuit, the 2012 law provide explicit deadlines for implementation ofthe rate hikes, “without regard to any other actions, includingwhen, or whether, the study required [the affordability study] inSec. 236 is completed.”

The brief was filed just after Congress made clear it has no desire to take up the issue of delayingthe rate hikes this year.