Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced a federal judge ruled the U.S. Department of Education acted unlawfully by abruptly discontinuing grants to fund extra mental health professionals in K-12 schools. The decision came after Raoul and a coalition of 16 attorneys general filed a lawsuit in July arguing the department violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it told grantees in April that it would discontinue the mental health grants program because they conflicted with the Trump administration’s new priorities. As part of the decision, the two sides will meet and agree on a timeline for the department to make lawful grant continuation decisions. After the 2023 tragic deaths of 19 students and two teachers during a mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a bipartisan Congress appropriated $1 billion to permanently bring 14,000 mental health professionals into the schools that needed it the most. Since then, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), reported grantees served nearly 775,000 students and hired nearly 1,300 school mental health professionals during the first year of funding. NASP also found a 50 percent reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral issues, and increases in positive student-staff engagement based on data from sampled programs.