President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
This week, a federal lawsuit has been filed accusing the Trump administration of unlawfully attempting to cut $1 billion in federal funding dedicated to school-based mental health services, defying a court order.
Trouble began last summer when the Department of Education announced plans to eliminate certain congressionally authorized grants for mental health programs in schools. These grants had been set up in response to the tragic Uvalde school shooting, aiming to bolster mental health resources for K-12 students.
In response to the DOE’s actions, 16 states, spearheaded by Washington, took legal action. These states argue that the proposed cuts would severely impact their ability to provide mental health services to schoolchildren who rely on them the most.
Amidst these legal proceedings, U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson, who was appointed by Joe Biden, delivered a decisive injunction in December 2025. This injunction prohibits the DOE from “implementing or enforcing by any means the Directive procedure,” effectively blocking the proposed funding cuts.
Now, the government is moving to cut the funds again based on a different formal mechanism, according to the latest lawsuit filed by most of the states that were part of the original litigation.
“The Department of Education persists in its illegal plan to deny critical mental health funding to public school students based on these new priorities even though a permanent injunction has been issued by this Court to stop it, and even though the underlying rationale upon which its plan is premised has been held unlawful,” the 56-page complaint filed Friday reads.
The funds in question support the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP), which aims to address a shortage of mental health professionals in high-need public schools.
The second tranche of targeted funds is for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH), which provides funding to help schools hire, train, and retain school-based mental health staff.
Each program was designed as a five-year initiative to place 14,000 new mental health professionals in schools – particularly schools in low-income and rural areas, the plaintiffs note.
Last year, the Trump administration said it intended to repurpose the MHSP and SBMH funds “based on new priorities.”
This time, the government says “some or all” of the protected grants are subject to termination. Last month, the DOE asked Evanson for clarification, arguing it has a “separate authority to terminate.”
“Defendants say they can do this because the [earlier] injunction enjoined ‘discontinuances,’ and now, the Department plans to ‘terminate’ the grants at issue,” the lawsuit explains. “But though the precise mechanism by which the Department plans to end the protected grants may have changed, its illegality has not.”
In other words, the government is now attempting a plan “to circumvent the permanent injunction by targeting the grants” directly under two separate directives rather than via piecemeal funding determinations, according to the litigation.
Now, the plaintiffs say they are not going to wait.
“Although Plaintiff States maintain that the [earlier] injunction prohibits Defendants from terminating grants based on the same unpublished priorities and oppose Defendants’ pending clarification motion, Plaintiff States file this lawsuit protectively, in the event the Court in Washington determines Defendants are not enjoined from terminating the Protected Grants under [the] permanent injunction,” the lawsuit goes on.
The states go on to note that the Trump administration committed roughly six months’ worth of funding for the programs after their loss in court, but has since “reversed course” and plans to cut the program grants beginning as soon as July 31.
“The first time this administration tried to take mental health services away from children, we beat them in court,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a press release announcing the litigation.
“Now they are trying to carry out the same illegal scheme and abandon students who need support,” James went on. “We already stopped them once, and we are prepared to do it again. My office will keep fighting to protect our children’s mental health and ensure schools have the resources to hire counselors, social workers, and psychologists in communities that need them most.”