SEATTLE (CN) — A coalition of states on Wednesday accused the Trump administration of violating, for a second time, a court order blocking the U.S. Department of Education from canceling school mental health grants.
“What we believe is going on is defendants are taking this opportunity to create excuses to discontinue our grants,” argued Jennifer Chung with the Washington Attorney General’s Office.
Washington is one of 16 states that sued the Education Department in July for cutting about $1 billion in funding for mental health services at primary and secondary schools.
The states claim the department canceled the grants — which were awarded under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program and the plaintiffs say have been incredibly successful — without providing a detailed explanation other than that they conflict with the Trump administration’s priorities.
U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson, a Joe Biden appointee, sided with the states in December and granted summary judgment on the states’ Administrative Procedure Act claims and issued a permanent injunction.
The injunction required the department to reconsider each grant using proper regulatory procedures and to base decisions on actual performance data rather than political preferences.
But the states say the department is trying to circumvent that order by imposing burdensome requirements on certain grantees and baselessly constraining and delaying access to funds.
“They are, in fact, trying to implement the discontinuances through other means by starving our grantees of funds, by manufacturing excuses to discontinue our grants, and that’s a violation of the permanent injunction,” Chung said.
The Education Department sent notices to 118 grantees in March stating their “federal awards will continue under protest” and that each grantee must submit an updated performance and budget report by June 1, which the department will then use to possibly award additional funds.
Plus, the states argued the department is treating certain grantees more favorably than others by essentially forcing grantees from the plaintiff states to go through a second continuation process. They also claim the department has imposed an onerous process to access funding as a way to hinder grantees.
“By setting up burdensome and impracticable measures that they know will harm our grant projects and that are designed to give defendants an excuse to discontinue our grants, defendants are implementing the discontinuances through any means,” Chung said.
Evanson pressed the department about the motivation behind its actions.
“Is singling out the grantees in this manner within the spirit of the injunction?” Evanson said. “This feels like bad faith. I’m just going to be really candid. It’s not a good look.”
But the Education Department denied singling out any grantees, arguing instead that certain grantees are being treated differently based on their unique circumstances.
“All of these grantees were considered under the standards the court imposed on the department, and the vast majority have new continuation decisions,” argued Brian Kipnis with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Evanson needled Kipnis about the representations he made to the court the last time the parties appeared on a motion to enforce summary judgment in January.
“You argued vigorously against a compliance plan that plaintiffs were asking for and represented on multiple occasions that if a grantee were given a new continuation award, that award would be for 12 months, can’t the court rely on that?” Evanson asked.
Kipnis said that was the intent at the time, but dynamic decision-making, likely tied to budget priorities, changed the plan. He also said the grants could be continued after the six-month check-in, and the states were complaining about a worst-case scenario that may not even occur.
“Nothing the department has done has violated anything in the court’s injunction,” Kipnis said.
To the department, the states are complaining about routine budget constraints faced by all federal grant programs.
“I don’t think that is what they’re complaining about,” Evanson responded. “It was represented here that there would be a calendar year of funding. … Now they’ve not been given a calendar year of funding, so now I think it’s fair to say that they’re facing uncertainty.”
Evanson declined to rule from the bench and indicated a written order would be issued as soon as practicable.
The grant programs at issue were created by Congress in 2018 and 2020, spurred by episodes of devastating school shootings. The multiyear grants are intended to address the shortage of school-based mental health service providers in low-income schools and to permanently bring 14,000 additional mental health professionals into U.S. schools that need them most.
In their first year alone, the programs provided mental and behavioral health services to nearly 775,000 elementary and secondary students nationwide, and they have resulted in a 50% reduction in suicide risk at high-need schools, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral issues and increases in positive student-staff engagement, the states claimed.
Subscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing
trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world,
while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood,
sports, Big Tech and the arts.