The program, established by a 2000 law, provides grants for a variety of disaster mitigation efforts, including levees to protect against floods, safe rooms to provide shelter from tornadoes, vegetation management to reduce damage from fires and seismic retrofitting to fortify buildings for earthquakes.

FEMA announced in April that it was ending the funding to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.” The program saved taxpayers more than $150 billion over 20 years, the plaintiffs said.

FEMA canceled some projects already in the works and refused to approve new ones despite funding from Congress.