New York Attorney General Letitia James today joined a coalition of 14 other attorneys general in suing the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon for again attempting to unlawfully cut federal funding for school-based mental health services. The lawsuit challenges the administration’s latest effort to terminate grant programs that help schools hire mental health professionals, which were created by a bipartisan majority in Congress in response to the worsening youth mental health crisis and a series of tragic school shootings, including in Parkland, Florida and Uvalde, Texas. In December 2025, Attorney General James and the coalition secured a permanent injunction blocking the administration’s attempt to unlawfully end these grants. Now, the Education Department is attempting to evade that court order by implementing the very same policy to eliminate these grants using a different method. Attorney General James and the coalition are asking the court to preliminarily and permanently stop the administration from cutting off this critical funding and protect the youth mental health infrastructure schools have built under these programs.
“The first time this administration tried to take mental health services away from children, we beat them in court,” said Attorney General James. “Now they are trying to carry out the same illegal scheme and abandon students who need support. We already stopped them once, and we are prepared to do it again. My office will keep fighting to protect our children’s mental health and ensure schools have the resources to hire counselors, social workers, and psychologists in communities that need them most.”
In 2018, following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Congress established and funded the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP) to address a shortage of mental health professionals in high-need public schools. Two years later, Congress expanded these efforts with the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH), which provided funding to help schools hire, train, and retain school-based mental health staff. In the wake of the devastating 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Congress dramatically increased funding for both programs, appropriating more than $100 million annually to each program through 2026. Each program was designed as a five-year initiative, with the goal of placing 14,000 new mental health professionals in schools, particularly those in low-income and rural areas, where students often face greater barriers to accessing mental health care.
These programs have already demonstrated measurable success. In the first year alone, nearly 775,000 students received mental or behavioral health services, more than 1,200 school-based mental health professionals were hired, and 95 percent were retained. Student wait times for care dropped by 80 percent. Grantees also reported a 50 percent reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, lower absenteeism and behavioral incidents, and stronger student-staff relationships.
Despite these successes, the Education Department abruptly moved in 2025 to discontinue more than $1 billion in funding for these programs, claiming that certain grants conflicted with the administration’s priorities because they supported diversity, equity, and inclusion. Attorney General James and a coalition sued, and in December 2025, won summary judgment, with a court order declaring the Education Department’s actions unlawful and permanently blocking the administration from using its new, unpublished priorities to “discontinue” the grants.
Following its loss in court, the Education Department provided approximately six months of funding to schools and other grantees. However, the administration has now reversed course and announced that it plans to “terminate” some or all of the same protected grants as soon as July 31, 2026. The administration claims it can do so because the coalition’s injunction blocked “discontinuities,” and they now plan to “terminate” the grants at issue. Attorney General James and the coalition argue that the Education Department cannot get around the court’s order by changing the word “discontinue” to “terminate.” In their lawsuit, the attorneys general write, “though the precise mechanism by which the Department plans to end the protected grants may have changed, its illegality has not.”
New York stands to lose at least $19 million in previously approved funding if the cuts are allowed to proceed. That includes more than $7.6 million for the State University of New York (SUNY) system. Without this funding, SUNY Binghamton could be forced to pull mental health professionals from schools serving more than 9,000 rural students, laying off 10 full-time staff, several part-time employees, and graduate assistants. SUNY Buffalo could be forced to end a fellowship program training school social workers to serve students in Western New York, jeopardizing care for an estimated 3,000 students. Several New York school districts and private institutions could also lose funding, threatening mental health services for students in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island, the Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes, the Mohawk Valley, Central New York, and other communities throughout the state.
Attorney General James and the coalition argue that the Education Department cannot use new, unpublished priorities to terminate grants that were already awarded, and cannot punish grantees for including equity statements that Congress itself required as part of the grant application process. They contend this latest attempt to terminate these grants violates the Administrative Procedure Act, federal grant regulations, and Congress’ authority. The attorneys general are asking the court to to grant a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from slashing the protected grants and prevent the department from imposing similar unlawful conditions moving forward.
Joining Attorney General James in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.
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