EDITORIAL: States should hold firm on lawsuit

OUR POSITION: We agreed when Florida and nine other states sued to reject FEMA's new flood map models and there is no reason to change our mind now that the Biden administration wants to kill that suit.

Anyone who has been slapped with a requirement to add flood insurance to an already-too-high home insurance bill, has to love what Florida and nine other states have done. And, that is to sue FEMA for its flood insurance maps that many propose rely too heavily on what might happen in the future instead of focusing on the danger of floods now.

The National Flood Insurance Program oversees flood insurance in the nation. It covers about 1.4 million policies in Florida alone that cost about $367 billion. If you have a mortgage and are in the flood zone according to maps drawn by FEMA that came out last year, you must carry a policy.

Some homeowners who have called The Daily Sun report that those policies are costing $5,000 or even more depending on the size and value of the home.

The shocking addition to a homeowner's budget is a real burden in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and more recently Idalia, even though the impact of that hurricane here was minimal.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers filed a motion last month to dismiss the case brought by Gulf states and others to make reforms on the maps and spare thousands of homeowners the extra burden of flood insurance.

Ten states and local government agencies in Louisiana filed a document Tuesday asking a federal judge to reject arguments that they have no local standing to challenge the changes in the national flood insurance policies, according to a News Service of Florida story.

In the NSF story, the document filed by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said: "Plaintiffs do not dispute that, under the legacy rating system (previous system), many individuals experienced slight annual increases as permitted under (a federal law). But policyholders have never seen rate increases like the ones they are seeing" under the changes.

The lawsuit, originally filed in June in the federal Eastern District of Louisiana, is all about changes known as "Risk Rating 2.0: Equity in Action."

The agency that drew up the new flood maps says changes are needed to make the flood insurance program sound and only reflect the risks of each property. The idea behind the changes is to ease the burden of landlocked states whose premiums were helping cover the cost of flood risk in coastal states.

The lawsuit alleges federal officials violated a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act by making changes that weren't needed and passing along high costs that will be detrimental to policy holders (plaintiffs).

Along with Florida and Louisiana, other states in the case are Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia.

Floridians and others do have the option to buy flood insurance from a private company and many are opting to take that route. How much, if any, money homeowners will save is hard to determine right now.

We side with the states that filed the original lawsuit. Even though we knew for a couple of years FEMA was redrawing maps that would likely impact numerous Florida homeowners, the massive number of policies involved and the huge costs caught most everyone by surprise.

Some relief is needed or Floridians will just have one more reason to reconsider where they live.