ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a 19-state lawsuit on Friday against the U.S. Education Department. It challenged new rules from USED on April 3 telling state and local school districts that they’d lose billions in federal aid unless they stop undefined “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

“Every student has the fundamental right to learn in an environment that is welcoming and open to everyone,” James said. She called the directive illegal and noted that she herself graduated from New York public schools.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and available to read at the bottom of this story, argued that USED violated the Administrative Procedure Act by ignoring rules requiring public notice and a comment period. It also points to the Department’s own charter barring it from “exercising any direction, supervision, or control over curriculum.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is supposed to prevent programs or activities that get federal money from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. The lawsuit contends that USED is contradicting over 60 years of enforcement and undermining “deeply rooted tradition[s]” of state control over education.

Nor does Title VI give USED the authority to police classroom instruction on DEI topics, per the lawsuit. James’s office added that New York already certified compliance with Title VI this fiscal year, so USED would be clawing back funds already spent.

The plaintiff states argued that USED can’t unilaterally redefine civil rights requirements. They want the court to block the new requirements, declare them unconstitutional and unlawful under the APA, and prevent them from being enforced. Those other plaintiffs are California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Under the order, federal Title I and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funds were supposed to get cut off by April 24 for any state that didn’t comply. That compliance involved investigating DEI activities, submitting enforcement plans, and gathering signed pledges from every local education agency—of which New York has nearly 1,000.

On whether USED or other federal agency had addressed the April 24 deadline, which has now passed, James said, “I think the silence speaks for itself.”

The lawsuit said that the directive threatens close to $19 billion in federal Title I and IDEA grants across the country. Of that amount, according to James’s office, about $3 billion would be for New York schools. That includes about $1.4 billion for low-income districts through Title I and nearly $1 billion more under the IDEA, which serves roughly 450,000 students with special needs statewide.

In Syracuse and Binghamton, school districts get over 14% of their revenues from federal sources, according to James’s office. That federal aid accounts for over 17% in Rochester and Buffalo.

The lawsuit connected the April 3 communication from USED to two January executive orders from President Trump. The January 21 “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” order deemed DEI efforts unlawful under Title VI. And the January 29 “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” order took aim at unspecified “discriminatory equity ideology” in public schools.

Last month, USED froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University and canceled $600 million in teacher shortage funding, accusing recipients of promoting “divisive ideologies.” States and districts remain unclear on which programs count as illegal, the complaint said, because the department never clearly defined those terms.

Take a look at the lawsuit below:

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