Education Agency Grilled Over Fast State Mental Health Grant Cut

The US Department of Education got a frosty reception before a panel of Ninth Circuit judges as it asked them to block a lower court order requiring it to continue school mental health grants.

At issue is a case brought by Washington and 15 other states, which won a court order requiring the agency to maintain funds for a pair of competitive, multi-year grant programs funding mental health services in schools. The Trump administration had sent each state “boilerplate” notices saying it would discontinue the grants because they conflict with the administration’s priorities.

Judge Jay Bybee appeared skeptical of the government’s position that it can unilaterally alter grant awards at oral arguments Monday in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He said that longstanding principles about the continuity of government mean that a new administration can’t establish new rules without jumping through the proper procedural hurdles.

“The new administration can change the rules, but it doesn’t just get to do it by fiat, and doesn’t just get to do it arbitrarily by announcement when the rules have been have been reified,” Bybee said.

“You can change the rules in the same way in which they were made, but you don’t get to just void them and walk away,” he said.

The agency is asking the three-judge panel to temporarily halt the final injunction by a federal district court in Washington state that requires the agency to make “lawful continuation determinations” for each grant. The deadline for those decisions was Feb. 6, but the Ninth Circuit agreed to pause that deadline until it makes a decision on the emergency motion.

Bybee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also expressed some concern with the states’ position that federal law says the government may only consider “performance information” when considering whether to continue the grants.

“I read it somehow differently than both the state and the government,” he said. A reasonable position is that while the government can’t consider anything it wants, it is allowed to consider whether a grant project “is in the best interest of the Federal Government.”

The coalition of states led by Washington sued in July last year, alleging the discontinuation of the grants violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The grant programs at issue, the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant and School-Based Mental Health Services Grant, were created by Congress in the aftermath Parkland, Florida, and Uvalde, Texas, school shootings.

The grants provide funding to recipient states for the first year and gives funds through one-year continuation awards over the next four years.

Judges Richard Tallman and Gabriel Sanchez also sat on the panel.

The case is State of Washington v. United States Department of Education, 9th Cir., No. 26-510, 2/23/26.