California and 23 other states sued the Trump administration on Monday over its freeze on more than $6 billion in education grants.
The grants, according to the lawsuit, help states prepare for the school year and cover initiatives like summer school and after-school programs, teacher training programs, and accessibility programs for students, including English language learners.
“Taken together with his other attacks on education, President Trump seems comfortable risking the academic success of a generation to further his own misguided political agenda,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a release announcing the suit on Monday. “But as with so many of his other actions, this funding freeze is blatantly illegal, and we’re confident the court will agree.”
The 96-page lawsuit alleges that the administration has “violated multiple statutory and regulatory commands.”
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The Trump administration froze the education funding, previously approved by Congress to provide academic help, child care and other support to mostly low-income families, earlier this summer. The lawsuit describes the notice of the freeze as a “boilerplate three-sentence e-mail to the States” that included a note that the administration was ensuring taxpayer money was spent in ways that align with the president’s agenda.
The White House and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget told The Hill there is “an ongoing programmatic review of education funding.”
“Initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” OMB told The Hill. “In one case, NY public schools used English Language Acquisition funds to promote illegal immigrant advocacy organizations.”
Afterschool Alliance, a group that works to expand after-school services for students, estimated that the frozen funds will affect 1.4 million students, about 20 percent of all students in after-school programs nationally, The New York Times reported.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a Monday press release that the freeze would have an outsized effect on childcare and English language programs.
“The federal government cannot use our children’s classrooms to advance its assault on immigrant and working families,” James said. “Congress allocated these funds, and the law requires that they be delivered. We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn’t like.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and NewsWell, home of Times of San Diego, Santa Barbara News-Press and Stocktonia.
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