AG Brown asks court to enforce order preserving school mental health grants

Attorney General Nick Brown and 15 other state attorneys general filed a motion on Tuesday asking a federal court to enforce its previous order requiring the U.S. Department of Education to halt the unlawful discontinuation of congressionally approved school mental health grants.

In defiance of the December court order, the department earlier this month decided to only award grantees funding for the first half of the 2026 budget period instead of the full year. By denying a full year of funding to grantees, the department has violated the court's order because that will effectively end some projects and severely burden many others. Without the certainty of a full year of funding, grantees cannot plan and budget for the fall semester, will lose graduate students and essential staff, and will be unable to provide mental health services to students.

"The Department of Education is effectively ignoring the Court and depriving kids and teens in Washington of the critical mental health supports they need and that were promised," Brown said. "The federal government must do what the Court ordered and what Congress intended-provide necessary help for our youth so they can thrive."

Spurred by the devastating impacts of school shootings, Congress established and funded the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP) in 2018 and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH) in 2020 to increase students' access to mental health services. Last April, the department notified grantees that their grants would be discontinued for allegedly conflicting with the Trump administration's priorities. The department later revealed the grants had been targeted for their perceived diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

In July 2025, Brown led the coalition in filing a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against the department over the discontinuation of the grants. In December 2025, the coalition secured a permanent decision declaring the department's discontinuations were unlawful and requiring it to make new continuation decisions. After the department lost an emergency motion before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the district court set deadlines for the department to make grant continuation decisions by March 2 and issue any new continuation awards by March 5.

In the motion to enforce, Brown and the coalition assert that:

• The department is continuing to violate the court's orders. In their most recent act of noncompliance, the department set new, ungrounded, and unnecessary measures that severely hinder grantees' ability to provide mental health services to students and are intended to achieve the same result as discontinuing the grants. In particular, the department imposed a supposed "risk mitigation measure" to limit the amount of funding to only six months instead of the full year.
• The department is also making grantees jump through unnecessary hoops, like filling out detailed reimbursement forms that historically have only been required for grantees who mismanaged funds and forcing grantees to submit a meaningless performance report before any new data is available.
• The department has also threatened not to provide the remaining six months of funding that grantees would have normally received and need for the fall semester.

MHSP addresses the shortage of school-based mental health service providers by awarding multi-year grants to projects that expand the pipeline for counselors, social workers, and psychologists through partnerships between institutes of higher education and local educational agencies. SBMH funds multi-year grants to increase the number of professionals that provide school-based mental health services to students through direct hiring and retention incentives. The ultimate goal of the programs is to permanently bring 14,000 additional mental health professionals into U.S. schools.

The programs have been an incredible success. In their first year, the programs provided mental and behavioral health services to nearly 775,000 elementary and secondary students nationwide. Sampled projects showed real results: a 50% reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral issues, and increases in positive student-staff engagement.

A copy of the motion is available here.

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Data also showed recruitment and retention efforts are working. In the first year of the programs, nearly 1,300 school mental health professionals were hired and 95% of those hired were retained. Importantly, these newly hired school-based mental health providers were able to create an 80% reduction in student wait time for services. The grants have helped schools hire hundreds of psychologists, counselors, and social workers who have served thousands of students.

Joining Brown in filing the motion are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.