Judge blocks Education Department's attempt to cut school mental-health funding
A federal judge barred the U.S. Department of Education from terminating millions of dollars in school mental-health grants after a coalition of states challenged the move.
In Seattle, U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson issued a 15-page order stopping the Education Department from again attempting to cancel roughly $1 billion in school mental-health grants. The judge concluded the agency’s termination plan was based on impermissible political factors, specifically directives tied to the former administration’s diversity and equity agenda. She reaffirmed that the department cannot retroactively apply new, unpublished priorities to multiyear grants that were approved under different rules.
The injunction requires the department to follow its own regulations, provide notice, and allow grantees a chance to contest any funding cuts. The ruling applies to two key programs created in 2018 and 2020 to address mental-health provider shortages in low-income schools. The programs have served hundreds of thousands of students and shown measurable benefits, according to the suing states. Both the department and the states declined to comment before publication.
Why it matters
The decision safeguards federal funding that supports mental-health services for millions of students across the United States.
How the sides frame it
MODERATE AGREEMENTBoth camps report that a court order halted the Education Department's attempt to cut roughly $1 billion in school mental-health grants, but centrist coverage stresses the judge’s finding that the cut was driven by impermissible political factors tied to a former administration’s diversity agenda, while right-leaning coverage emphasizes the coalition of fifteen states winning the order and frames the department’s DEI-related policy as arbitrary.
CENTER
Centrist coverage frames the story as a judicial rebuke of a politically motivated attempt to cancel mental-health grants, highlighting the judge’s finding of impermissible political influence tied to a former diversity agenda.
RIGHT
Right-leaning coverage frames the story as a victory for a coalition of states, portraying the department’s policy to bar diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as arbitrary and contrary to law.
The right emphasises
- fifteen states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, obtained a temporary restraining order
- order preserves funding for two federal school-based mental-health grant programs
- coalition says the department’s policy to eliminate discrimination and bar DEI initiatives makes the termination plan arbitrary and contrary to the Administrative Procedure Act
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