Press Release  AG Campbell Sues Trump Administration For Freezing $6.8 Billion In Education Grants Just Weeks Before School Year Starts

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today co-led a coalition of 23 attorneys general and the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky in suing the Trump Administration over its unconstitutional, unlawful, and arbitrary decision to freeze $6.8 billion in funding for six longstanding programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education just weeks before the school year is set to begin. In Massachusetts, the freeze impacts more than $107 million in funding for critical K-12 and adult education programs.

“The Commonwealth’s nation-leading schools rely on this over $100 million in educational funding to help our students meet our education standards, promote effective classroom instruction, provide afterschool programming and extracurricular activities, and so much more,” said AG Campbell. “The President does not have the authority to decline spending funds appropriated by Congress, and as long as this Administration continues to violate our laws, I will continue to hold him accountable.”   

Pursuant to federal statutory and regulatory requirements, each year the Department of Education makes around 25% of the funds for these programs available to states on or about July 1 in order to permit state and local educational agencies to plan their budgets for the academic year ahead. The states have complied with the funding conditions set forth under the law and have plans that the Department of Education has already approved. The states have received these funds every year, without incident, for decades. 

The freeze of these funds was announced in an email sent to the plaintiff states on the evening of June 30, regarding funds that the states had expected to become available the very next day. The three-sentence message announced, without notice or explanation, that the funds would be withheld pending a “review” of the expenditures for, among other things, consistency with the “President’s priorities.”

Massachusetts and other states count on this funding to carry out a broad range of programs and services, including educational programs for English learners; programs that promote effective classroom instruction, improve school conditions and the use of technology in the classroom; community learning centers that offer students a broad range of opportunities for academic and extracurricular enrichment; and adult education and workforce development efforts.

This funding freeze has immediately thrown into chaos plans for the upcoming academic year. Local education agencies have approved budgets, developed staffing plans, and signed contracts to provide vital educational services under these grants. Now, as a result of the Trump Administration’s actions, states find themselves without sufficient funding for these commitments, just weeks before the start of the 2025-2026 school year. The abrupt freeze is also wreaking havoc on key teacher training programs as well as programs that make school more accessible to children with special learning needs, such as English learners.

Without this funding, many educational programs will shutter. The attorneys general argue that the funding freeze violates the federal funding statutes and regulations authorizing these critical programs and appropriating funds for them, violates federal statutes governing the federal budgeting process (the Antideficiency Act and Impoundment Control Act), and violates the constitutional separation of powers doctrine and the Presentment Clause.

It is Congress, not the Executive Branch, that possesses the power of the purse. The Constitution does not afford the Executive Branch power to unilaterally refuse to spend appropriations that were passed by both houses of Congress and were signed into law. Yet that is exactly what the Trump Administration is attempting to do here. The attorneys general ask the Court to declare the funding freeze unlawful – as courts have repeatedly done in other multistate cases – and block any attempts to withhold or delay this funding to the states involved in the lawsuit. Of the $6.8 billion being withheld nationwide, approximately $3.6 billion is being withheld from the plaintiff states.

Joining AG Campbell in filing this lawsuit, which she co-led with the attorneys general of California, Colorado, and Rhode Island, are the attorneys general of Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the governors of Pennsylvania and Kentucky. 
 

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