Dive Brief:
- A federal judge on Monday temporarily prevented the Trump administration's continued attempts to revoke school-based mental health grants awarded under the Biden administration.
- The 15 states behind the lawsuit were awarded up to $1 billion in mental health grants that were at risk of being cancelled beginning July 31. The temporary restraining order issued Monday protects them until a further decision is made in the case.
- A previous order from the same court issued in December found that the administration's first attempt at terminating the grants was unlawful and permanently blocked them, despite an attempted appeal by the U.S. Department of Education. That lawsuit was filed by most of the same states as the current one, which alleges the department is pushing forward with cancellations.
Dive Insight:
The Education Department was targeting funding awarded under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program because of recipients' ties to diversity, equity and inclusion.
In the original case last year, State of Washington v. U.S. Department of Education, U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson vacated the discontinuation notices that were issued to recipients in spring 2025 and instructed the Education Department to issue new continuation decisions.
Evanson is also the judge who issued the temporary restraining order Monday in the current case.
“Nothing in the existing regulatory scheme comports with the Department’s view that multi-year grants may be discontinued whenever the political will to do so arises,” Evanson's original ruling said.
In response, the Department issued new continuation decisions. But the department awarded funding only until the end of July, after which it said it would review grants once more and make additional funding determinations, said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. Maryland is one of the 15 states that sued earlier this month.
Instead of making all the awarded funding available to recipients, the department in June told states and the court it planned to terminate “some or all” of the grants, per court documents.
"The Court previously enjoined a similar if not substantively identical procedure in the Washington action used to discontinue the grants, and the procedure is no more lawful in the termination context here than it was there," said Evanson in her new decision.
The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive's request for comment in time for publication.
As the original Washington case was playing out last year, the Education Department issued new priorities for the mental health grant programs and then awarded hundreds of millions in additional funding to new recipients while the original recipients' funding was in limbo. The revised priorities prohibited recipients from “promoting or endorsing gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”
Evanson in her Monday order said that it is unlawful to make funding decisions for already-approved multi-year grants by "evaluating their original grant applications against new unpublished priorities not in effect at the time that the Grants were approved."
While the Monday decision is temporary, Evanson said that the department "has formulated a plan to re-review Grants for termination based on unlawful reasons," and the states were likely to succeed in the case on at least some of their allegations, including that the administration's cancellations were arbitrary and capricious.
The temporary restraining order expires August 24, at which time a preliminary injunction — or another temporary pause — may be issued until a final decision is made in the case.
