On June 30, 2025, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown led a coalition of 16 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Education for illegally cutting congressionally approved funding for mental health programs in K-12 schools.

Congress passed the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program (MHSP) in 2018 following a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program (SBMH) in 2020 to augment mental health services after similar tragedies continued to occur. As is standard for Department of Education grants, a multi-year grant entails funding for the first year, with continuation awards granted if the Department determines that the recipient has met performance and financial requirements as defined by the programmatic goals set out by Congress.

In 2022, a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, prompted Congress to appropriate an addition $1 billion to pay for 14,000 mental health professionals to be hired in schools. In just the first year of the increased funding, the 1,300 professionals served an estimated 775,000 students in schools across the country. The National Association of Schools Psychologists (NASP) found that grantee high-risk schools saw significant reductions in absenteeism, behavioral issues, and especially suicide risk, which was down 50%.

Despite the congressional mandate, on April 29, 2025, the Department of Education sent out boilerplate language informing schools that the Trump administration would be terminating the MHSP and SBMH grants at the end of the calendar year because they were not in line with its priorities. The AGs’ lawsuit alleges that this non-continuation decision must be blocked for several reasons, including that it was out of line with Department procedure, did not constitute proper notice, and there was no window for comments about the change in procedure.

The non-continuation of these vital mental health programs threatens to worsen the mental health of students in the highest-risk communities in the country. Demonstrated improvements in absenteeism, behavior, and suicide risk could be drastically eroded. This has the potential to cause suffering both in school communities and wider communities affected by such tragedies as the shootings that inspired the grant legislation.

School-based mental health programs can be a literal life saver for our students. The Department of Education’s decision threatens the safety and well-being of our youth. Attorney General Nick Brown