Student backpacks seen on the first day of school last year at Harborview Elementary School in Juneau, Alaska. Fifteen Democratic-led states are suing the Trump administration over cuts to a $1 billion school mental health grant program. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
Fifteen states sued the Trump administration on Friday to prevent millions of dollars in cuts to school mental health funding.
The recent lawsuit is part of an ongoing legal battle between Democratic-led states and the U.S. Department of Education over a mental health grant program that Congress created after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
At stake is a $1 billion program that provides grants to school districts across the country to support them hire and train more mental health professionals to work in schools.
Democratic attorneys general in 15 states say the Trump administration violated one Court order of December 2025plans to illegally terminate the grants at the end of this month, which would result in millions of dollars in funding losses.
“Our children struggle with a unique set of issues that come with growing up in 2026 – from loneliness to substance use disorders to the pervasive fear of violence – and the programs funded by these grants are designed to help them cope and hopefully thrive,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, a Democrat, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
In 2022, after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 students and two teachers dead, Congress appropriated $1 billion for the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program to augment the number of mental health professionals in schools.
These funding efforts were bipartisan; Republican U.S. senators at the time, including John Cornyn of Texas, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina publicly supported it. And within a year, the grants funded mental health and behavioral health services for nearly 775,000 students nationwide.
But in April 2025, the U.S. Department of Education told grant recipients under President Donald Trump that funding would be terminated because of their programs was at odds with the Trump administration’s priorities. At that time, the grants supported efforts in 49 states to prepare thousands of mental health professionals to work in K-12 schools.
Trump administration officials told the media that the grants were cut because the administration saw a connection to them Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
A coalition of 17 Democratic attorneys general sued Last July, a court ruled in their favor and ordered the Trump administration to stop cutting off the grants. In the months since the order, the Education Department has threatened to withhold funding or stop grants altogether.
Democratic attorneys general said they filed the recent lawsuit to close loopholes in the previous court order that could allow the Trump administration to comply with its request to stop funding.
“The courts have repeatedly ruled that the Trump administration does not have the authority to arbitrarily withdraw grants that provide critical mental health services to our students,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, said in a statement opinion about joining the lawsuit.
“Nevertheless, the federal government continues its attempts to stop funding.”
Stateline reached out to the U.S. Department of Education for comment but did not receive a response prior to publication.
Attorneys general involved in the lawsuit come from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org
This story was originally produced by State borderwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes West Virginia Watch, and is a 501c(3) public charity supported by grants and a coalition of donors.
