Protecting the Volunteer Workforce
Why Emergency Responders and Volunteers Need the Same Job Protections We Give the Military
Consider a scenario that federal and state law permit without remedy. A Coast Guard Auxiliary member puts in a leave request before deploying with his flotilla to support operations during Hurricane Helene. The storm has caused catastrophic flooding across the Southeast. His flotilla has been called to assist. He gives his employer advance notice. He documents his service. He follows every reasonable procedure. His employer terminates him anyway.
There is no federal law that would protect him. His service is not covered by USERRA. In most states, no applicable statute exists. Nothing about this scenario is illegal. The people making the calls that week — auxiliarists, state defense force members, Civil Air Patrol volunteers, Red Cross disaster responders, community emergency response team members — had no legal floor under their civilian employment. One bad employer decision and years of volunteer service can become a reason you lose your job.
This is the gap we need to close. Not with another unfunded program, not with a recognition ceremony, and not with a strongly worded press release. With law.
What We Actually Have: A Patchwork That Leaves Most Responders Exposed
Let’s start with what federal law actually does.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1994, is the foundational federal protection for employees who leave civilian jobs to perform military service. USERRA covers members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Army Reserve, Naval Reserve, Marine Corps Reserve, Air Force Reserve, Coast Guard Reserve, and the Army and Air National Guard. It covers full-time active service, weekend drills, annual training, and fitness exams. It requires employers to allow unpaid leave, prohibits discrimination or retaliation based on military service, and requires reemployment in the same or equivalent position with the same seniority, status, and pay upon return. USERRA protects the employment rights of individuals who must be voluntarily or involuntarily absent from their civilian employment positions to serve in the U.S. military, and prohibits employers from discriminating against past and present members of the uniformed services.
USERRA applies to all employers, public and private, regardless of size. Its enforcement teeth grew significantly with the passage of the Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act in January 2025. The Dole Act is the first amendment to USERRA since the 2022 Civilian Reservist Emergency Workforce Act (CREW Act), which extended its coverage to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reservists. The Dole Act forbids an employer from taking retaliatory action against an employee for exercising their rights under the law, removes the adverse employment action element to establish retaliation, and increases the amount of money damages that may be awarded against an employer if USERRA is violated, with minimum damages of $50,000 or the total of an employee’s lost wages and benefits.
These are meaningful protections. Now here is the problem.
Service in the Civil Air Patrol and the Coast Guard Auxiliary similarly is not considered “service in the uniformed services” for purposes of USERRA. Consequently, service performed in the Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Civil Air Patrol, and the Coast Guard Auxiliary is not protected by USERRA.
State defense forces are also excluded. FEMA Community Emergency Response Teams are excluded. American Red Cross disaster volunteers are excluded. Team Rubicon volunteers, of which there are approximately 180,000 in North America, are excluded. Members of volunteer fire departments and EMS agencies — who provide the overwhelming majority of emergency services in rural and suburban America — have only whatever protections individual states choose to provide, if any.
The CREW Act of 2022 showed that Congress understands how to extend USERRA’s logic beyond the traditional military. The CREW Act extends employment protections under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reservists who deploy to major disaster sites. The reasoning was sound: a National Guard member called up for hurricane relief had ironclad job protection. But a FEMA reservist responding to the same hurricane had no protection at all. They could lose their job simply for helping disaster victims.
The RAND Corporation, in research supporting the CREW Act, found that expanding USERRA coverage to FEMA reservists would be critical to the recruiting and retention of FEMA reservists and would increase FEMA’s readiness posture and ability to respond to disasters.
Congress accepted that argument for FEMA reservists. The same argument applies, with equal or greater force, to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol, state defense forces, and credentialed nonprofit disaster relief volunteers. The logic doesn’t stop at a particular badge.
The Organizations Doing the Work Without the Protection
Before making the case for expanded protections, it’s worth being precise about who we’re talking about and what they actually do. These are not hobbyists. These are trained, vetted, uniformed volunteers integrated into the federal and state emergency management framework.
The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary
The Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed, civilian volunteer component of the United States Coast Guard, established by Congress in 1939. As of 2026, the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary boasts around 18,000 members. Auxiliarists are instrumental in saving around 500 lives a year, aiding 15,000 mariners in distress, performing over 150,000 recreational vessel safety checks, and imparting boating safety knowledge to over half a million learners. The Auxiliary collectively logs over 4.5 million service hours annually.
The dollar value of this labor is not trivial. The Auxiliary saved the Office of Management and Budget (taxpayers) $240 million in the prior year. Every day, over 10,800 hours are logged by Auxiliary volunteers performing on-water boating safety patrols, while 11 distressed boaters are saved and 548 vessel safety checks are conducted.
The Auxiliary’s missions include search and rescue, maritime and aviation observation, homeland security patrols, and support to active-duty Coast Guard units, including crewing vessels, staffing operations centers, and filling administrative and logistics billets. Auxiliary volunteers increase the number of equivalent full-time Coast Guard personnel working at a unit and have the potential to increase retention, as they ease some of the strain on active-duty members. The Coast Guard itself is operating under severe personnel strain: the Coast Guard has reported that it is about 4,800 members short and has missed its recruiting targets for the past four fiscal years.
Auxiliarists wear a uniform. They train to Coast Guard standards. When on federal duty, auxiliarists are deemed federal employees in the context of civil liability. They operate under federal authority. They cannot carry weapons or perform direct law enforcement. But they perform seven of the eleven congressionally mandated missions of the Coast Guard.
And none of that matters under USERRA.
The Civil Air Patrol
The Civil Air Patrol is the official auxiliary of the United States Air Force, established in 1941 and chartered by Congress. It performs three primary missions: emergency services, aerospace education, and cadet programs. In the emergency services role, CAP conducts inland search and rescue missions, disaster relief operations, humanitarian airlift, and counterdrug reconnaissance. CAP has over 60,000 members nationwide, organized into wings by state.
CAP is integrated into the Air Force’s operational structure. During federally declared disasters, CAP is authorized to fly reconnaissance and assessment missions under Air Force direction. Its members are trained, background-checked, uniformed volunteers operating under federal authority with a specific federal mission.
They are also not covered by USERRA. A CAP member who deploys for a week on a hurricane assessment mission, providing aerial photography that guides FEMA’s response, has no federal job protection for doing so. The Air Force benefits. The taxpayer benefits. The Air Force member sitting next to him or her in a different aircraft has full USERRA coverage. The CAP pilot does not.
Several states have recognized this gap and acted. North Dakota prohibits employers from terminating, demoting, or otherwise discriminating against volunteer civilian members of the Civil Air Patrol, and requires employers to allow such employees to be absent from work for up to 20 working days each year because they are responding to a disaster or natural emergency. Maryland requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide at least 15 days per year to respond to an emergency mission of the Maryland Wing of the Civil Air Patrol. California enacted the Civil Air Patrol Employment Protection Act, covering employers with 16 or more employees and providing up to 10 days of unpaid leave for emergency operational missions. Indiana requires employers with 15 to 50 employees to provide up to 15 days, and employers with 51 or more to provide up to 30 days.
These state laws are a reasonable start. But they are not uniform; they apply only within the state, and they vary significantly in scope. A CAP member flying a mission that crosses state lines can return to different levels of protection depending on which state they live in. That is a poor design for a national emergency response capability.
State Defense Forces
State defense forces, also known as state guards or state military reserves, are established by state authority under 32 U.S.C. § 109. They exist to provide states with a military reserve that cannot be federalized, ensuring the state retains some military capability when the National Guard is deployed overseas or to other states.
As of 2023, 23 states and three territories operate active SDFs, comprising approximately 20,000 personnel who focus on homeland security, disaster response, and support to the National Guard without eligibility for federal activation.
The model is consistent across states that maintain active forces. SDF members volunteer their time for training and community support and are only paid when called to state active duty by an authorization from the Governor. Their primary lines of effort typically include administrative and logistics support, cyber network defense, operations center augmentation and interoperable communications, and direct support to the National Guard with medical, chaplain, legal, and public information capabilities.
These are not units sitting in armories waiting for something to happen. State defense forces have supported National Guard operations during hurricanes, wildfires, flooding events, and the COVID-19 pandemic response across multiple states. During major activations, SDF members staff operations centers, manage logistics distribution, support public information operations, and fill billets that free up Guard personnel for more operationally intensive tasks.
These are real missions with real operational significance. The people performing them are volunteers with civilian jobs. When an SDF member gets called to state active duty and goes in uniform to support a flood response operation, their employer has zero federal obligation to hold their job. Some states extend military leave protections to state defense force members. Many do not.
Volunteer Fire and EMS
The numbers here are large enough to constitute an actual public safety crisis, and they have been trending in the wrong direction for four decades.
Volunteers represent approximately 65 percent of all U.S. firefighters (NVFC, 2024), and 82 percent of all U.S. fire departments are volunteer or mostly volunteer. Approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population, concentrated in rural and suburban communities, is protected primarily by volunteer departments.
The decline in volunteer numbers is sustained and significant. Since 2008, the nation’s volunteer fire service has shed an average of 12,000 firefighters per year, falling from about 827,000 members to 635,000 in 2023. At the same time, the number of calls to U.S. fire departments has increased about 70 percent since 2008, from roughly 25 million to 42 million, leaving the remaining volunteers saddled with an ever-increasing workload and fewer resources to address it.
The rural EMS situation is, if anything, more alarming. Nearly one-third of rural EMS agencies across the country are in immediate operational jeopardy, and more than two-thirds of rural EMS directors report difficulty recruiting and retaining volunteers, with a majority describing the problem as unchanged or worsening.
Researchers and fire service organizations point to several interconnected causes for the long-term volunteer decline: time demands from modern training requirements, the rise of two-income households and less flexible work schedules, an aging volunteer base, and increased call volume.
The last item on that list — work schedule flexibility — is directly addressed by employment protection law. A volunteer firefighter who knows their employer can terminate them for responding to a major incident during work hours is a volunteer firefighter who is weighing every call. Some of them will stop answering.
Some states have moved to address this. Virginia SB100, signed into law in April 2026 and effective July 1, 2026, is one recent example. The bill prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who miss work to serve as a volunteer emergency responder, meaning an active member of a recognized volunteer fire department or emergency medical services agency. Employers may not discharge, discipline, threaten, discriminate against, or penalize employees for their service.
That protection is real and it matters. But Virginia SB100 applies only to active responses to emergency alarms or declared states of emergency. It does not cover mandatory training, which can run into dozens of hours per year. It does not cover state defense force members, Coast Guard auxiliarists, or CAP members. It does not establish reemployment rights — only anti-retaliation protections. And it is one state law, not a federal standard.
Nonprofit Disaster Relief Volunteers
The American Red Cross is perhaps the clearest example of a nonprofit organization with quasi-official standing in the national emergency management framework. The Red Cross operates under a congressional charter and has a federal mandate to provide disaster relief. Volunteers constitute about 90 percent of the American Red Cross workforce. Volunteers make it possible to respond to an average of 60,000 disasters every year, most of them home and apartment fires.
Team Rubicon fields approximately 180,000 North American volunteers, predominantly veterans and first responders, who deploy to domestic and international disasters. The organization has responded to every major domestic disaster since its founding in 2010 following the Haiti earthquake, including hurricanes Irene, Sandy, Harvey, Maria, Florence, and Michael, along with floods, tornadoes, and wildfires. They do skilled, coordinated, credentialed work. They do it in uniform. They do it in coordination with FEMA, state emergency management agencies, and other voluntary organizations active in disasters (VOADs).
A Red Cross Disaster Action Team volunteer who deploys to a major hurricane response for ten days has no federal employment protection. There is no USERRA equivalent for credentialed nonprofit disaster relief volunteers operating under federal or state mission assignments. Some employers are understanding. Some are not. The volunteer absorbs the risk.
The Precedent Is Already There. Congress Just Hasn’t Extended It.
The CREW Act established something important beyond its practical effect for FEMA reservists. It established the principle that Congress can extend USERRA-equivalent protections to non-traditional uniformed service, and that doing so makes the national emergency response apparatus more capable and more reliable.
The NDMS precedent goes further. The National Disaster Medical System, operated under the Department of Health and Human Services, deploys volunteer medical professionals during major disasters. NDMS reservists are protected by USERRA. When the NDMS was created, the law made clear that service with the NDMS would be treated as ‘service in the uniformed services’ entitled to USERRA protection. NDMS reservists are, in fact, federal employees who are activated on an episodic intermittent basis to respond to national disasters.
The NDMS model is instructive. NDMS volunteers meet specific qualification requirements — maintaining licensures and certifications, attending training events, remaining medically and physically fit. They are structured, credentialed, and integrated into federal operations. When activated, they receive federal employee status and the protections that come with it.
The Coast Guard Auxiliary already operates under this basic model. Auxiliarists are vetted, trained, uniformed, and credentialed. When on federal duty, they are already deemed federal employees for civil liability purposes. Extending USERRA protections to cover their civilian employment is a modest and logical next step. The same applies to CAP, which operates under Air Force authority and has equivalent credentialing requirements.
What is needed is a framework that defines the category clearly and consistently. The framework should not require membership in any particular organization. It should require meeting a defined standard of training, credentialing, mission authorization, and organizational accountability.
What the Federal Gap Looks Like in Practice
It is worth being concrete about what the absence of federal protection actually means for these volunteers and their employers.
A Coast Guard Auxiliary flotilla commander who is called to deploy with her flotilla during a major flood does not have a reliable legal right to take that time off without employment consequences. She may give her employer advance notice. Her employer may decline to hold her job. She has no USERRA claim. She has no federal remedy. Her only recourse is whatever her state law provides, if her state provides anything, and civil litigation is not a realistic option for most working people.
A Civil Air Patrol member who is activated by the Air Force to fly reconnaissance missions after a hurricane gets in his aircraft and does the mission. He returns home. He goes back to work. His employer, aware that he was gone and that the Air Force had asked him to go, fires him. He can appeal to the state if the state has a CAP protection law. If not, he has a contract claim if there is an employment contract and a creative state tort claim if the facts support it. USERRA does not help him.
A Team Rubicon Greyshirt with ten days of disaster work experience who deploys to support debris removal in a flood-damaged community has no employment protection at all, at any level. He or she is not a government employee, not a member of a uniformed service, and not covered by any federal statute. Their service may be coordinated with FEMA under a mission assignment, paid for with federal disaster dollars, and staffed by veteran volunteers who have completed Team Rubicon’s training certification. None of that creates legal protection for their civilian employment.
A state defense force member called to state active duty by the governor during a declared emergency is a member of the state’s uniformed militia, drilling under military command and performing missions that relieve the National Guard. They have raised their right hand to join the organized militia and agreed to be available when the state calls. Their employer’s obligation to hold their job depends entirely on whether the state has a statute addressing it. Most do not, and those that do typically cover only National Guard members, not SDF volunteers.
These are not edge cases. These are foreseeable situations that occur every time there is a significant disaster, and significant disasters are not becoming less frequent.
The Proposal: A Federal Civilian Emergency Service Protection Act
The solution is not to stretch USERRA’s existing definitions until they break. The solution is to create a parallel structure that applies the same logic — protection for people who perform authorized service in the public interest at personal cost — to the civilian emergency volunteer workforce.
Call it the Civilian Emergency Service Protection Act, or CESPA. Here is what it should contain.
Covered service. CESPA should apply to service performed by members in good standing of: the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary; the Civil Air Patrol; state defense forces established under 32 U.S.C. § 109; Community Emergency Response Teams certified under FEMA’s program; and credentialed volunteers of nationally recognized disaster relief organizations operating under federal mission assignments, including but not limited to the American Red Cross, Team Rubicon, and other FEMA-integrated VOADs.
Qualifying service. Not all volunteer activity should qualify. The protection should attach to: service during a federally or state-declared disaster or emergency; authorized training required to maintain membership and operational qualification; and specific mission activations ordered by competent authority (a Coast Guard district command, the Air Force, a state adjutant general, or a FEMA-authorized mission assignment).
The key principle is that the service must be structured, authorized, and required. Informal volunteerism should not be covered. Service in organizations with defined training standards, credentialing requirements, and command accountability should be. The distinction between NDMS and general disaster volunteers is a good model: NDMS reservists must complete certain requirements such as maintaining licensures and certifications, attending training and other events, and remaining medically and physically fit to qualify for protection as federal employees. Apply that standard to the broader category.
Employment protections. CESPA should mirror USERRA’s core framework:
No employer shall discharge, demote, discipline, or penalize an employee for taking leave to perform covered service, provided the employee gives advance notice when operationally possible.
Upon return from covered service of 30 days or less, the employee shall be reinstated to the same position. For service longer than 30 days, the employer has a few days to provide reemployment. The employee shall be treated as though continuously employed for purposes of seniority, pay, and benefits.
No employer shall be required to pay the employee during covered service, but the employee may use accrued paid leave if they choose.
Health insurance continuation rights similar to USERRA’s 24-month continuation provision should apply.
Pension and retirement plan accrual protections should apply.
Enforcement. CESPA should be enforced by the Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS), which already administers USERRA. The same complaint and referral process should apply.
Remedies. Using the Dole Act framework: reinstatement, back pay, liquidated damages for knowing violations with a minimum floor of $50,000, reasonable attorney fees, and injunctive relief.
Notice requirements. Employees should be required to give advance notice of service when operationally possible. For rapid-onset emergencies — a Coast Guard Auxiliary call-out, a fire alarm response, a CAP search and rescue mission with a six-hour activation window — the notice requirement should be relaxed consistent with USERRA’s existing emergency exceptions and the one-hour advance notice model already used in existing state laws.
Small employer provisions. USERRA applies to all employers regardless of size. CESPA should do the same, with the recognition that for very small businesses — fewer than ten employees — case-by-case hardship provisions might be appropriate, similar to the Family and Medical Leave Act’s small employer threshold. But the default should be universal coverage.
Why a Separate Classification Makes Sense
There is a reasonable argument that the simplest path is just to extend USERRA itself to cover CAP, USCG Auxiliary, and state defense forces. That argument has merit and should be explored. The CREW Act demonstrated that Congress can amend USERRA to add new categories. There is no legal barrier to adding the Auxiliary, CAP, and SDFs to the definition of “uniformed services.”
However, a separate statute makes sense for several reasons.
First, USERRA is built around the concept of uniformed military service. CAP and the Coast Guard Auxiliary are civilian auxiliary organizations. They wear uniforms and operate under federal authority, but they are not military services in the traditional sense. Forcing them into USERRA’s framework creates definitional tension and potential litigation over the scope of coverage.
Second, a separate statute can be designed from the outset to cover the broader category of credentialed civilian emergency volunteers, including nonprofit disaster relief organizations. USERRA cannot practically be extended to cover American Red Cross volunteers without significant conceptual revision.
Third, a separate statute allows Congress to calibrate the protections specifically to the civilian emergency context — including provisions for advance notice during rapid-onset events, documentation requirements suited to incident reporting rather than military orders, and coordinated enforcement through agencies already involved in emergency management.
The NDMS model shows how this can work. NDMS volunteer medics receive USERRA-equivalent protection by statute because Congress decided their service was important enough to warrant it. They are not military. They are credentialed civilian volunteers who serve episodically in a structured, federal-authorized capacity. That is exactly what Coast Guard auxiliarists, CAP members, state defense force members, and trained nonprofit disaster volunteers do.
What a Good State Law Looks Like — and Where It Falls Short
Virginia SB100, signed into law on April 6, 2026, and effective July 1, 2026, is a useful case study in what state-level employment protection legislation can accomplish and where its limits lie. The bill prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who serve as volunteer emergency responders during declared emergencies or when responding to emergency alarms. It protects active members in good standing of volunteer fire departments or emergency medical services agencies recognized by their local governments.
Protected employees must provide employers with at least one hour's advance notice before scheduled work and submit incident reports with commander certification upon return. Employers cannot discharge, discipline, threaten, discriminate against, or penalize employees for absences related to emergency response duties, though employers are not required to pay for missed work time. Employees may use accrued vacation or sick leave to cover absences.
The bill provides civil remedies: the court may order an injunction to restrain continued violation, reinstatement to the same position or an equivalent position, and compensation for lost wages, benefits, and other remuneration, together with interest and reasonable attorney fees and costs.
That is a workable framework. But the bill has three significant gaps.
The first is structural. The definition of covered volunteer covers only active members of recognized volunteer fire departments or EMS agencies. State defense force members, Coast Guard auxiliarists, CAP members, CERT volunteers, Red Cross volunteers, and Team Rubicon Greyshirts are all outside the bill’s coverage. Legislatures that pass bills like this have an opportunity to protect the full range of civilian emergency volunteers, and most have not taken it.
The second is coverage type. SB100 is an anti-retaliation statute. It prohibits punishing employees for emergency absences. But it does not establish affirmative reemployment rights. USERRA requires that returning service members be reinstated to the position they would have occupied had they never left — the “escalator principle.” SB100 requires reinstatement to the same or equivalent position but only as a remedy after the fact, not as an affirmative requirement. For short absences, that distinction may not matter much. For longer activations, it can make a real difference.
The third gap is mandatory training. SB100 applies when an employee “actively responds to an emergency alarm or during a state of emergency.” It does not apply during mandatory training. For volunteer firefighters and EMS providers, this matters: training is where they earn and maintain their certifications, and increasingly demanding training requirements are one of the factors driving member attrition. A volunteer who cannot attend evening training drills without risking employer retaliation is a volunteer who may not last.
State laws like this are a step in the right direction. The gaps they leave are the reason Congress needs to establish a federal floor.
The Retention Argument Is the Strongest Argument
There is a values argument here, and it is valid. People who give their time, accept physical risk, and sometimes absorb injury or death in service to their communities should not be made to choose between that service and their livelihood. That argument speaks for itself and does not require elaboration.
But for policymakers who need a practical justification, the retention argument is more immediately compelling.
The volunteer fire and emergency services workforce is in structural decline that decades of effort have not reversed. The number of volunteer firefighters has fallen from about 827,000 in 2008 to 635,000 in 2023, while calls have increased by 70 percent over the same period. The people who would once have made up those ranks — working adults in their thirties and forties — face more constraints on their time than previous generations. Two-income households are the norm. Training requirements have grown substantially. The call volume is higher. The complexity of calls has increased.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 1960, 25 percent of households with children had two working parents. In 2016, that number increased to 66 percent, and it is expected to keep increasing. Every working parent who serves as a volunteer firefighter or auxiliary firefighter is managing competing obligations. An employer who views volunteer emergency service as a workplace liability makes that balancing act harder. A law that eliminates employment risk makes it slightly easier.
The RAND Corporation reached this conclusion for FEMA reservists. Expanding USERRA coverage to FEMA reservists would be critical to the recruiting and retention of FEMA reservists and would increase FEMA’s readiness posture and ability to respond to disasters. The same logic applies to every other category of trained, credentialed emergency volunteer. Employment uncertainty is a documented attrition driver. Reducing it through law is a retention investment.
The Coast Guard’s situation makes this especially acute. By 2025, it was predicted that the Coast Guard would be short almost 6,000 enlisted members and several hundred officers. Active-duty members continue to serve at undermanned, overworked units, straining to compensate for the service-wide 10 percent gap in authorized enlisted end strength. The Auxiliary provides direct relief to this pressure. Auxiliary volunteers increase the number of equivalent full-time Coast Guard personnel working at a unit and have the potential to increase retention, as they ease some of the strain on active-duty members. A policy that makes it harder to recruit and retain Auxiliary members, therefore, has a direct effect on the readiness of the active-duty service.
The taxpayer argument follows naturally. The Auxiliary saves the Office of Management and Budget approximately $240 million per year in labor value. Volunteer fire and EMS services across the country offset hundreds of millions in state and local expenditures annually — labor that taxpayers would otherwise have to fund directly. Every volunteer who leaves the ranks because of employer retaliation or employment uncertainty is a cost externalized onto the public.
The Employer Side of the Equation
An honest discussion of employment protection legislation requires acknowledging the employer’s perspective. Small businesses in particular may find unpredictable absences genuinely disruptive, especially in industries where coverage is difficult to arrange on short notice.
That concern is real. USERRA manages it through proportionality: the protections scale with the length of service, notice requirements are enforced, and documentation is required. Virginia SB100 adds the one-hour advance notice requirement and incident report certification. A properly designed CESPA would do the same.
There are also reasonable exemptions worth considering. Employees designated as essential by statute or contract — air traffic controllers, hospital surgeons on call, power plant operators — represent a genuine category where immediate replacement is impractical. SB100 includes this exception. USERRA has parallel provisions. A CESPA should as well.
What is not a reasonable employer concern is the basic proposition that trained, credentialed emergency volunteers should be able to do their jobs without risking their livelihoods. The employer is not subsidizing the volunteer’s service — the service is unpaid. The employer is being asked to hold a job open for a short period while a vetted, authorized volunteer performs a mission that serves the public. That is a modest ask.
Several states that have enacted Civil Air Patrol protections have included reasonable thresholds — employer size minimums, annual day limits, documentation requirements — that balance the employer’s operational needs against the volunteer’s employment security. That approach is sensible and should be included in any federal legislation.
The Nonprofit Disaster Relief Question
The American Red Cross, Team Rubicon, and equivalent organizations present a harder design question than the uniformed auxiliary services. They are neither government agencies nor quasi-governmental auxiliaries. They are private nonprofit organizations that operate under defined agreements with FEMA and state emergency management agencies.
But the practical question is whether their credentialed disaster volunteers, operating under federal mission assignments, performing work that government agencies would otherwise have to pay for, should have employment protection when they deploy.
The answer should be yes, with the credentialing requirement serving as the limiting principle.
Not every Red Cross volunteer has the same level of training or operational commitment. A volunteer who helps stuff envelopes for a local fundraiser is in a different category from a Disaster Action Team volunteer who has completed disaster relief training, is cleared for deployment, and is activated under a FEMA mission assignment to provide mass care at a shelter. The latter is performing a function that the federal government has determined is essential to disaster response and has agreed to incorporate into its plans and operations.
The same distinction applies to Team Rubicon. A casual supporter who attends a fundraiser is not the same as a Greyshirt who has completed Team Rubicon’s training certification and is deployed under a mission assignment to perform debris removal or recovery work coordinated with state emergency management.
The credentialing framework already exists. VOADs operating under FEMA mission assignments are registered, monitored, and accountable. FEMA has memoranda of agreement with major disaster relief organizations that define the scope of their authorized activities. A Greyshirt on a FEMA-coordinated mission is operating under federal authorization in a manner broadly similar to an NDMS volunteer or a FEMA reservist.
This is not a radical expansion. It is the same logic applied to a wider set of organizations that are already functionally integrated into the federal disaster response system.
A CESPA covering nonprofit disaster volunteers should require: organizational registration with FEMA or FEMA-recognized VOAD status; individual volunteer credentialing through the organization’s program; activation through a documented mission assignment; and documentation of service upon return to employment, consistent with what SB100 and USERRA already require.
What the Law Should Look Like: A Functional Outline
For policymakers or advocates who want a concrete starting point, here is a workable framework for federal legislation.
Short title: Civilian Emergency Service Protection Act (CESPA).
Covered organizations:
U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary (established under 14 U.S.C. § 901 et seq.)
Civil Air Patrol (established under 10 U.S.C. § 9491 et seq.)
State defense forces established under 32 U.S.C. § 109
FEMA-certified Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT)
Nationally recognized disaster relief organizations operating under FEMA mission assignments, including Red Cross, Team Rubicon, and FEMA-registered VOADs
State-recognized volunteer fire departments and EMS agencies (providing a federal floor above existing state-only protections like SB100)
Covered service:
Activation or deployment during a federally declared major disaster or emergency under the Stafford Act
Activation during a state-declared emergency under gubernatorial authority
Mandatory organizational training required to maintain qualification and membership in good standing
Authorized mission operations under command authority, including Coast Guard district authorizations, Air Force mission assignments, and state adjutant general activations
Employee obligations:
Advance notice of service to the employer, when operationally practicable. For rapid-onset emergency responses, notice must be given as soon as practicable.
Documentation of service upon return, including incident reports or activation records and certification by the incident commander or unit officer
Return to civilian employment within a reasonable period following the conclusion of service, on a schedule consistent with USERRA’s tiered return provisions
Employer obligations:
Grant unpaid leave for covered service without discharge, demotion, discipline, or any other adverse employment action
Reinstate the employee to the position they would have occupied upon return, including the same seniority, pay, and benefits
Continue health insurance coverage per USERRA-equivalent provisions
Credit continuous service for pension plan accrual
Not require the employee to use accrued leave during covered service, though the employee may elect to do so
Exemptions:
Employees designated as essential by statute, contract, or applicable licensing authority, where immediate replacement is impractical, are not covered for duration-limited exceptions
Employers with fewer than 10 employees may apply for hardship determinations through the Department of Labor, on a case-by-case basis
Enforcement: Department of Labor, Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS), using the same complaint, investigation, and referral process as USERRA.
Remedies: Reinstatement; back pay and benefits with interest; liquidated damages for knowing violations, minimum $50,000; reasonable attorney fees; injunctive relief.
Preemption: CESPA establishes a federal floor. State laws providing greater protections are not preempted.
The Fairness Argument
This article has focused primarily on the practical and policy arguments for employment protection legislation. The retention numbers, the fiscal savings, the gap in the law, the CREW Act precedent, the state-level momentum. These arguments are sound and they should be made.
But there is a simpler argument underneath all of them.
When a Coast Guard Auxiliary member goes out on the water at 2 a.m. to respond to a vessel in distress, they are doing the work of the federal government without federal pay and without federal employment protection. When a CAP pilot climbs into his aircraft to fly grid patterns looking for a missing hiker, he is performing a mission the Air Force has asked him to perform, and the Air Force will not protect his civilian job for doing it. When a state defense force member reports to the Emergency Operations Center during a hurricane because the Governor called the unit up, they are a uniformed member of the state’s organized militia, and their employer is under no obligation to hold their position.
These are people who said yes to a hard thing. They trained. They showed up. They went out. They do not expect to be paid. They expect, reasonably, not to lose their jobs for it.
The country relies on them. The reliance is documented, quantified, and built into every emergency response plan at every level of government. The federal disaster response apparatus would not function without them. The Coast Guard would not meet its mission requirements without the Auxiliary. States would not have emergency surge capacity without their defense forces. Rural communities would not have fire and EMS coverage without volunteers.
We have decided as a country that people who serve in the military should not lose their civilian jobs for doing so. We have decided that FEMA reservists are important enough to extend that protection to them. The logical next step is to extend it to the rest of the civilian emergency workforce that keeps this country functioning when things go badly wrong.
The objections are manageable. The precedent is clear. The need is documented. The cost to the federal budget is minimal — this is a labor law requirement, not an appropriation.
The only thing missing is the legislation.
Conclusion: Close the Gap
Virginia SB100 passed. That matters. One letter, making a specific and documented argument, resulted in a new law that protects volunteer firefighters and EMS providers from employer retaliation. That is how this works.
The next step is broader, harder, and more important. The federal government needs to extend USERRA-equivalent protections to the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol, state defense forces, and credentialed nonprofit disaster relief volunteers. The CREW Act already established the template and the political will. Congress extended USERRA to FEMA reservists in 2022 with bipartisan support because the argument was sound and the need was real.
The argument for extending similar protections to the broader civilian emergency volunteer workforce is equally sound and the need is at least as real. Volunteer numbers are declining. The organizations that depend on them are under capacity pressure. Employment uncertainty is a documented deterrent to volunteering. And the people performing these missions — trained, vetted, uniformed, and operating under federal or state authority — are not a fringe case. They are a core component of how this country manages disaster.
A Civilian Emergency Service Protection Act would not solve the volunteer recruitment and retention crisis by itself. Pay, training requirements, culture, leadership, and community connection all matter. But it would remove one documented barrier: the rational calculation that volunteering is not worth the employment risk.
Removing that barrier is cheap. Replacing the workforce that might leave because of it is not.
Close the gap.