PROVIDENCE – R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Neronha has joined another legal battle against the Trump administration, this time against the U.S. Department of Education.
Neronha’s office on Tuesday announced that he joined a coalition of 16 state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit late Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington’s western district against the USDOE for “illegally” cutting congressionally approved funding for mental health programs in K-12 schools. Neronha and the other attorneys general claim that USDOE sent “boilerplate notices” to grantees on April 29 claiming that their grants are “now conflicted” with the Trump administration’s priorities and “funding would be discontinued.”
The funding cuts, the coalition claims, violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution.
Neronha’s office says U.S. Congress appropriated $1 billion to bring 14,000 mental health professions into schools needing them the most. The bipartisan effort came in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, mass school shooting that killed 21 students and teachers, Neronha said.
Neronha’s office says the state “needs the resources” provided by these programs. Data Neronha’s office provided in a release notes that one in five [19%] of children ages 6-17 in Rhode Island has a diagnosable mental health problem and 10% has a significant functional impairment.
Additionally, data from the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey notes that 37.8% of students felt sad or hopeless and 17.1% of Rhode Island-based high school students reported that they seriously considered attempting suicide, Neronha’s office says. Plus, 14.5% of local high school students report that they had planned how they would attempt suicide during the last 12 months before the survey, and 9.7% of high school students attempted suicide, Neronha says.
“The good news: mental health is discussed more openly and treated more widely than ever before. The bad news: this administration is again attempting to unlawfully revoke federal funding, passed by Congress, to help school-age children deal with the myriad of issues they confront on a daily basis,” Neronha said in a statement. “From bullying to loneliness to the ever-present fear of violence, including school shootings, our kids desperately need the resources made possible by these grants. And we will always fight for the safety of our children.”
The attorneys general are seeking an injunction rescinding the cuts and asking for a judge to declare the cuts are illegal, Neronha’s office says. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin are also plaintiffs in this case.
This lawsuit is the latest in a slew of legal action against the Trump administration that Neronha has either led or joined. In May, he co-led a group of 20 state attorneys general
challenging cuts to the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, saying the Trump administration’s massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises. Neronha was also part of a group of attorneys general challenging an executive order Trump signed during his first day in office, pausing approvals, permits and loans for all wind energy projects both onshore and offshore, as well.
In April,
attorneys general from 23 states, including Rhode Island, filed the suit in federal court in Rhode Island over the administration’s decision to cut $11 billion in federal funds that go toward COVID-19 initiatives and various public health projects across the country. The suit claimed that Rhode Island would lose more than $31 million from cancellations by U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on X at @James_Bessette.
