On October 27, 2025, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) to reinstate, for now, canceled federal grants for student mental health services due to “numerous irreparable harms flowing from the discontinuation decisions.”
In June 2025, 16 states sued the USDE in after the Trump administration in canceled the multi-year congressionally approved funding for the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant. The order applies to about 50 school districts, colleges, and nonprofit entities who received the grants in the plaintiff states.
In the order, the judge said grant discontinuations were likely “arbitrary and capricious” because they were not renewed based on individual reasons, but rather were discontinued with a generic message saying that the grants “were not in the best interests of the federal government.”
The states that filed the lawsuit are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.
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