Mississippi lacks standing to sue the federal government for raising flood insurance premium rates, and has not demonstrated that it will suffer "imminent, irreparable injury" absent an immediate delay in implementing the rate hikes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said late last night in a reply brief to a lawsuit filed in Federal Court in Gulfport, Miss.
The brief, and an accompanying motion seeking dismissal of the case, comes as both houses of Congress consider actions that would delay the rate hikes.
A hearing on the issue is being held today by the House Financial Services Committee, and efforts are underway by 23 senators to attach legislation, S. 1610, to a bill reauthorizing the National Defense Act.
At the same time, Martha Coakley, Democratic attorney general of Massachusetts, filed a friend of the court brief in the case. The brief supports not only Mississippi, but other Gulf States, such as Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina, which have filed briefs seeking to delay the rate hikes.
The FEMA brief was in response to a lawsuit filed by the Mississippi Insurance Department Sept. 26 seeking to delay the rate increases, in some cases which raise rates exponentially.
FEMA says Mississippi's lawsuit doesn't take into account Congress found, in enacting the law, that rate increases ensured the long-term financial stability of the National Flood Insurance Program and was in the public interest.
The FEMA brief said the provisions of the 2012 law the lawsuit challenges are meant to further this goal by transitioning subsidized rates to actual risk-based rates for certain properties. "Enjoining the implementation of these sections would contravene not only the language of [the law], but Congress's intent in passing the law."
Mississippi "significantly downplays the deleterious effects" granting a preliminary injunction would have on the NFIP, says FEMA, which began implementing certain portions of the provision Mississippi seeks to delay implementation of, Sec. 205 of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2012, "after many months of planning."
FEMA says it would take "many months more" for it to reverse this implementation, and the NFIP would face increased costs as a result.
The Coakley brief makes different points than the other amicus briefs submitted to the court. Coakley alleges FEMA failed to collect accurate data before rolling out its new rates.
"The federal government should delay these changes until FEMA has followed all the steps required by law," Coakley says. "In setting these new flood insurance rates, FEMA not only failed to evaluate their economic impact, but also failed to gather all the data required to ensure the new rates are accurate."
In addition to failing to weigh the known consumer harm, the Coakley says, "FEMA ignored the opportunity to use tools provided by Congress," and has engaged in "bureaucratic ostrich headedness."
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