Washington-led coalition wins Ninth Circuit ruling for school mental health grants

(Updated Feb. 24, 2026, to add the new deadlines set by the district court.)

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Washington and 15 other states today in their fifth court victory against the U.S. Department of Education’s unlawful discontinuation of previously approved mental health grants for K-12 schools.

“What’s at stake is nothing less than the well-being of our kids,” Attorney General Nick Brown said. “This administration prefers wasting time in court instead of providing the needed support for youth who are struggling. Thankfully, the appeals court said enough is enough.”   

Since last June, the states have been fighting the Department of Education’s abrupt and unlawful decision to discontinue grants that were previously approved and that are used to provide 14,000 mental health professionals in U.S. schools, especially in low-income and rural communities. The department had sent boilerplate notices to the grantees saying their projects no longer aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, new priorities that the federal government never publicly announced. 

The states, led by Brown, won three rulings at the district court level, including a summary judgment order in December. Today’s ruling is the plaintiffs’ second win from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In this latest order, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected the Department of Education’s motion to set aside a deadline, one the department itself had chosen, to issue grant continuation decisions. The panel sent it back to the district court to set new deadlines.

“The Department’s discontinuation notices were not tailored to the specific grants and failed to explain what was wrong with each grantee’s project, which is not a sufficiently reasoned explanation for the agency’s decision to cancel the individual grants,” the judges wrote in today’s order.

Following the order, District Court Judge Kymberly Evanson set a new deadline for the Department of Education to issue grant continuation determinations by March 2 and any new continuation awards by March 5, backdated to February 6.

But even with the plaintiffs’ multiple court wins, the department has dragged its feet, failing to deliver the bulk of the funds schools and other grantees had counted on to help address the youth mental health crisis. Washington previously had 11 grants and that has now dropped down to two, as the Department of Education awarded some of the funds in question to other programs in other states.

Joining Brown in the lawsuit were the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

A copy of the appeals court ruling is available here. 

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