Colorado sues U.S. Department of Education over illegal termination of youth mental health funding

July 1, 2025 (DENVER) – Attorney General Phil Weiser joined 15 other state attorneys general in suing the U.S. Department of Education for illegally discontinuing $1 billion in congressionally approved grant funding for educational institutions and local governments to address the youth mental health crisis. Nearly $10 million in funding is at stake for the University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Denver, Metropolitan State University, Poudre Valley School District R-1, and the Colorado Department of Education.

“Finding solutions to the mental health crisis hurting our children is top of mind for me and for people in every Colorado community. This illegal action by the U.S. Department of Education to rip away critical funding couldn’t be happening at a worse time,” said Attorney General Weiser. “Colorado is taking action because our educational leaders need every tool possible to support kids who are struggling with disconnectedness, loneliness, and isolation. I will continue to go to court whenever the federal government breaks the law and harms Coloradans.”

The U.S. Department of Education had awarded the funding to the nation’s high-need, low-income, and rural schools through its Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program, or MHSP, and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program, or SBMH. Congress established and funded MHSP in 2018 and SBMH in 2020 to increase students’ access to mental health services with a goal to permanently bring 14,000 additional mental health professionals into U.S. schools. Funding at issue in this case was appropriated by Congress in 2022, in part as a response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas (opens new window).

In Colorado, the funding aims to address a shortage of school-based mental health care professionals through recruitment, retraining, and re-specializing clinical workers for school-based roles. Funding recipients hope to use the money to reduce turnover and improve the well-being and academic success of students. This includes the Colorado Department of Education expediting licensure of new hires, strengthening partnerships with higher education institutions and expanding course access for college students. In total, the funding promises to support 955 new, retrained, or re-specialized school-based mental health professionals.

Despite the early hope for progress, on or about April 29, 2025, the Department of Education sent boilerplate notices to grantees, including state education agencies, local education agencies, and institutes of higher education, claiming that their grants conflicted with the Trump administration’s priorities and would not be continued. The notices provided little to no insight into the basis for that decision and hamstrung projects years in the making.

Though the notices sent to funding recipients were vague, the administration admitted in statements to the media that it targeted grants in the plaintiffs’ states for their perceived diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, which the states argue is not a legal basis for discontinuation. The attorneys general argue that the Trump administration’s decision to discontinue funding through a vague boilerplate notice, without any mention of grantees’ performance, violates the Administrative Procedure Act and is an unconstitutional violation of the spending clause and separation of powers.

If allowed to stand, the administration’s illegal decision to discontinue this funding would cause irreparable harm to schools’ abilities to provide mental health services to students. The decision could also end up worsening the mental health crisis by breeding mistrust in mental health care and feelings of abandonment in kids who had been benefiting from the programs.

Read the complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington (PDF).

Attorney General Weiser joins the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

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Media Contact:
Lawrence Pacheco
Chief Communications Officer
(720) 508-6553 office
lawrence.pacheco@coag.gov