Office of the
Illinois Attorney General
Kwame Raoul

Chicago — Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 15 attorneys general, filed a lawsuit to prevent the U.S. Department of Education from unlawfully terminating congressionally approved school-based mental health grants. Despite a previous court order prohibiting it from discontinuing the grants, the administration plans to renew its efforts to end essential mental health programming at the end of July by terminating the grants.

“The Trump administration is once again unlawfully interfering with federal funding authorized by Congress, at the expense of our children’s mental health,” Raoul said. “These services support our students and help keep our schools and communities safe, and I will continue to fight for them.”

In the wake of devastating school shootings, members of Congress from both parties came together to appropriate $1 billion to permanently bring 14,000 mental health professionals into U.S. schools most in need, especially in low-income and rural communities. The programs have been an incredible success. In their first year, 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% 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.  

The grants have provided essential services from school-based mental health professionals for countless students throughout Illinois. Just one of the many programs the administration attempted to cancel has provided additional mental health services for more than 50,000 students in Illinois since the program’s outset. 

In April 2025, the Department of Education notified grantees in Illinois and the coalition states that their grants would be discontinued for conflicting with the Trump administration's new priorities. The department later revealed the grants had been targeted for their perceived support for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

In July 2025, Raoul and the coalition filed a lawsuit against the department over the discontinuation of the grants. In December 2025, the coalition secured an order declaring the department’s discontinuations were unlawful and requiring it to make new continuation decisions. The court also issued a permanent injunction that prohibited the department from implementing the discontinuations “through any means.”

Though the department continued almost all of the grants at issue in response to the court’s order, it has engaged in an ongoing campaign to hinder, threaten and ultimately try to eliminate the mental health grants in Illinois and the coalition states. The department issued continuation awards through Dec. 31, 2026, but provided funding for only six months, making planning difficult because grantees do not know how much funding they will receive for the fall. The department is also making grantees jump through unnecessary hoops to access funds, diverting resources and staff from supporting student mental health.

The department claimed it planned to review the grants at the six-month mark and make additional funding determinations. Instead, the department has targeted the grants protected by the original injunction and announced a plan to terminate them altogether. By calling this a termination rather than a discontinuation, the administration seeks to circumvent the court’s order, which required them to follow the law with respect to these important mental health grants. Raoul and the coalition continue to fight this attempt to circumvent the court’s order, and they have also filed this new lawsuit to prevent the planned terminations and cover any gaps that would threaten these critical grants.

Terminating the grants would result in the loss of millions of dollars in mental health services to Illinois students. Raoul has gone to court repeatedly to fight for these mental health grants and has won five times against the administration. But the department has dragged its feet, harming the ability of schools and other grantees to address the ongoing youth mental health crisis. Now the department threatens to terminate the remaining grants in Illinois at the end of July.

In today’s lawsuit, the attorneys general allege that the Department of Education’s plan to terminate the mental health grants violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution. The attorneys general have also requested a preliminary injunction to prevent the grants from being terminated.

Joining Raoul in filing the lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.