New York Attorney General Letitia James and 14 other attorneys general say the U.S. Department of Education is trying to sidestep an earlier injunction by terminating school mental health grants under a new label.
What happened
New York Attorney General Letitia James and a coalition of 14 other attorneys general sued the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon on July 10, accusing the agency of again trying to cut federal funding for school-based mental health services after an earlier court order blocked a prior effort.
The lawsuit challenges the administration’s latest move to terminate grant programs that help schools hire mental health professionals, according to the New York attorney general’s office. The coalition is asking the court for preliminary and permanent relief barring the administration from cutting off the funding and protecting programs schools have built around the grants.
The dispute follows a December 2025 win for James and the coalition, when they secured summary judgment and a permanent injunction blocking the department from using new, unpublished priorities to discontinue the grants. The press release says the department later funded schools and other grantees for about six months before announcing plans to terminate some or all of the same protected grants as soon as July 31, 2026.
The attorneys general argue the new action is an unlawful workaround, saying the agency cannot avoid the prior order by changing its terminology from discontinuing grants to terminating them. In the lawsuit, the coalition says that “though the precise mechanism by which the Department plans to end the protected grants may have changed, its illegality has not.”
The grant programs at issue include the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program, established in 2018, and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program, which later provided funding to help schools hire, train and retain school-based mental health staff. After the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, Congress increased funding for both programs, appropriating more than $100 million annually to each through 2026, according to the release.
New York stands to lose at least $19 million in previously approved funding if the cuts proceed, including more than $7.6 million for the State University of New York system, the release says. The coalition contends the department cannot use new, unpublished priorities to terminate already-awarded grants or punish grantees for equity statements that Congress required in applications.