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A Trump administration directive terminating more than $1 billion in federal funding for school-based mental health services is the latest ruling being challenged by a group of 16 Democratic attorneys.
Led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the lawsuit filed this week calls on the court to reinstate the grants, calling the cut unlawful, unconstitutional, and ideologically driven.
The grants were created by Congress under a bipartisan law passed after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers. The money was used to hire staff, diversify the mental health profession, and prepare educators to work with kids from diverse backgrounds — specifically in high-need, low-income, and rural schools — but with President Donald Trump’s attempts to root out programs incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion, his administration pulled the funding for many states and schools two months ago.
Without offering evidence that the cuts were based on grantees’ performance standards, the lawsuit says the administration instead applied an ideological litmus test after terminating the program. The administration sent grantees boilerplate language, according to the lawsuit, which claims it was an “arbitrary and capricious” move that did not account for any individualized reasons for the change, nor consider the harmful impact to children dependent on the mental health services or the effect on the pipeline for the chronically understaffed mental health workforce across the nation.
“The cost to our children’s safety, well-being, and academic success is incalculable,” the lawsuit stated. “These grants were designed to respond to America’s school shooting crisis and fill a critical need in schools. Without them, many children in rural and lower-income schools will go without mental health services and will suffer the attendant consequences: short- and long-term health problems; lower grades; increased absenteeism, suspensions, and expulsions; and a higher risk of suicide and drug overdose.”
In the grant program’s first year, nearly 775,000 students received mental or behavioral health services, according to the lawsuit. The grants helped hire more than 1,200 school-based mental health professionals, and student wait times for services dropped by 80%. A sample of projects reported a 50% reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, improved attendance, and stronger student-staff relationships.
The federal Department of Education did not respond for comment.
Among the decimated programs, Teachers College at Columbia University had begun training five graduate students to provide mental health services in Harlem and East Harlem schools serving large populations of newly arrived immigrants and families struggling to find stable housing. The program was in the process of sending out acceptance letters to eight more students when the funding was cut.
The $4.9 million, five-year grant aimed to prepare mental health professionals, many of whom were bilingual or first-generation students who couldn’t have afforded graduate school otherwise and planned to commit to working in school-based mental health for their careers. The cuts not only affected the program’s short-term ability to provide high-needs schools with critical services for free, said Prerna Arora, an associate professor of psychology and education at Teachers College who was overseeing the grant, but also decimated the future pipeline of professionals dedicated to this kind of work.
If the lawsuit is successful, restarting the grant would not be impossible, Arora said, but it would take time to scale services back up, and the program and the schools are on a typical school calendar, which could affect timelines.
“The funds are definitely needed to address the mental health workforce shortage in our school,” she said in an email. “However, because of the cuts, which were effective immediately, additional time would be needed to rehire staff, recruit and admit students to the training program, and restart the formal partnership with our community schools.”
In all, New York stands to lose at least $19 million in previously approved funding as a result of these cuts, including more than $7.6 million for the State University of New York system, James’ office said.
Chalkbeat senior national reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed reporting.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.
