Attorney General Bonta Secures Preliminary Injunction Blocking Trump Administration’s Attempt to Discontinue School-Based Mental Health Grants

OAKLAND - California Attorney General Rob Bonta today, alongside a multistate coalition, announced securing a preliminary injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Education (Department) from unlawfully discontinuing grants awarded through Congressionally-established school-based mental health grant programs, including millions of dollars awarded to 21 local education agencies and universities in California. The preliminary injunction, issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, blocks the Trump Administration from implementing its discontinuation decisions against nearly 50 grantees in plaintiff states, while the lawsuit proceeds. The court's order also prevents the Trump Administration from reinstituting the discontinuation decisions based on the same or similar reasons against those nearly 50 grantees.

On October 21, U.S. District Court Judge Kymberly Evanson rejected the Department's motion to dismiss the case. In the court's decision issuing the preliminary injunction, the court held that the States will likely succeed in showing that the Department acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, violating the Administrative Procedure Act. The court concluded that the Department did not explain its discontinuation decisions and did not consider the valuable time and resources grantees invested in their grant projects. The court limited the injunction to grantees that had submitted declarations to the court explaining how they'd been harmed by the Department's discontinuation notices.

"The court's decision requires the Trump Administration's Department of Education to provide thousands of students in our state a fair shot at accessing crucial mental health services that support their success and wellbeing, while our litigation continues," said Attorney General Bonta."Instead of fulfilling its mission of promoting educational excellence and equity for all students, the Department of Education is using baseless and unlawful excuses to rip funding from projects that provide necessary mental health services - especially in our low-income and rural communities. The court's ruling brings us one step closer to ensuring the Department of Education follows the law when it makes mental health grant award decisions in the future."

BACKGROUND:

On June 30, 2025, Attorney General Bonta joined a coalition of 16 states in suing the Trump Administration's Department of Education over its unlawful decision to discontinue grants awarded through Congressionally-established school-based mental health grant programs: the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program. These grants support students in high-need, low-income, and rural schools, and the mental health services are critical to students' well-being, safety, and academic success. The lawsuit seeks injunctive and declaratory relief requiring the Department to follow the law and determine whether to continue to award funding based on the grantees' performance, and to prevent the Department from unlawfully reallocating the funding to other grantees.

The attempted discontinuances targeted a bipartisan act of Congress that appropriated $1 billion for mental health supports in schools after the tragic deaths of 19 students and 2 teachers during a mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. During the first year of funding, grantees served nearly 775,000 students and hired nearly 1,300 school mental health professionals, according to the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). NASP also found a 50% reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral issues, and increases in positive student-staff engagement based on data from sampled programs.

Despite the success of these mental health programs, on or about April 29, 2025, the Department sent boilerplate notices to 44 grantees in California, including local education agencies and institutes of higher education, claiming that the grantees' projects conflicted with the Trump Administration's priorities and would not be continued. The notices claimed the Department intends to reallocate funds based on new priorities of "merit, fairness, and excellence in education," providing little to no insight into the basis for the discontinuance, while threatening projects years in the making. However, in the press, the Trump Administration implied that it targeted Plaintiff States' grants for their perceived diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, which the States argue is not a legal basis for discontinuation. The attorneys general argue that the Trump Administration's decision to discontinue funding through a vague boilerplate notice, without any mention of grantees' performance, violates the Administrative Procedure Act and is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Spending Clause and guarantee of Separation of Powers.

A copy of order is available here.