Ninth Circuit blocks Trump's bid to slash school mental health funding

(CN) — The Ninth Circuit thwarted the Trump administration’s latest effort to cut mental health grant funding for schools in a late Thursday order.

The Department of Education must comply with a lower court order preventing it from canceling as much as $1 billion in grant funding for mental health services in schools across the country, a panel of three Ninth Circuit judges determined.

“The government has not made a strong showing it is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims that the district court lacks jurisdiction over this action,” the panel wrote. The panel included U.S. Circuit Judges Richard Tallman, a Bill Clinton appointee, Gabriel Sanchez, a Joe Biden appointee, and Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee.

A coalition of mostly blue states sued the Department of Education in June to prevent it from ending the grant funding in elementary and secondary schools by the end of 2025.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson, a Joe Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction in late October, finding that the states were likely to succeed on their claim that the Education Department’s funding cuts were “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act.

The government appealed that order, asking the Ninth Circuit to make a decision before Dec. 5 or else the Education Department claimed it could not reasonably make new grant awards by the end of the year. The Ninth Circuit wasn’t persuaded that the department would be irreparably injured without its intervention.

“Because the district court’s injunction does not result in the disbursement of any funds, the government has not demonstrated it will be irreparably harmed by the payment of monies that the government cannot recover,” the panel wrote.

Before the Ninth Circuit earlier this week, the government argued that the states’ claims against it were essentially contractual in nature and therefore belonged in the Court of Federal Claims instead. However, the Ninth Circuit noted that the states made a strong argument otherwise.

The states are asking for the discontinuation decisions to be blocked, a request the Ninth Circuit said doesn’t cause any grant to be renewed because grant continuances aren’t automatic.

The Education Department also argued that the discontinuation decisions couldn’t be reviewed under the APA, but the Ninth Circuit again rejected this.

“The act does not commit broad discretion to the department, unlike other cases in which the Supreme Court hasfound agency action committed to discretion by law,” the panel wrote.

Plus, the department is “constrained by its own regulations, “which provide standards for how courts should review discontinuation decisions.

Lastly, the appeals court noted that the lower court is moving quickly to resolve the underlying claims. A summary judgment hearing is set for next week and the court has indicated it intends to issue a decision before the end of the month.

“Under these circumstances, we see no basis to grant an emergency stay of the preliminary injunction,” the panel wrote.

The mental health grants include the Mental Health Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program.

Congress first approved the programs in 2018 following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland, Florida, that took the lives of 17 students and staff members. The intention with both was to address a shortage of mental health professionals in high-need public schools.

Congress then increased funding for the programs after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed 21 students and staff in 2022.

Neither the states nor the Department of Education responded to a request for comment before press time.