Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration’s decision to withhold about $6.8 billion in federal funding for K-12 schools in the reconciliation bill. 

Governors and attorneys from 24 states and Washington, D.C., sued in federal court in Providence, Rhode Island, arguing that the Department of Education and the Office of Management and Budget threw K-12 schools nationwide into a panic by unconstitutionally freezing funds.

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In the newly passed One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, six educational programs previously approved by Congress had their federal funding cut. These programs are the education of migrant farm workers and their children, recruitment and training of teachers, English proficiency learning, academic enrichment, after-school and summer programs, and adult literacy and job-readiness skills.

According to the lawsuit, the government was legally required to release the funding to states on July 1. However, the Education Department notified states a day before that it would not be issuing grant awards for the six programs by the deadline. The department cited changes in administration as its reason. 

The federal government said it paused the funds to review where they are going, adding that the priorities do not align with the administration’s goals.

“The federal government cannot use our children’s classrooms to advance its assault on immigrant and working families,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said. “This illegal and unjustified funding freeze will be devastating for students and families nationwide, especially for those who rely on these programs for childcare or to learn English. Congress allocated these funds and the law requires they be delivered. We will not allow this administration to rewrite the rules to punish the communities it doesn’t like.”

There is no timeline yet for when or if the government will release the funds for the programs. 

An OMB spokesman at the time cited an “ongoing programmatic review” of education funding, and said initial findings showed what he believes to be a misuse of grant funds to “subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”

Previously, OMB raised objections to the use of the grant money to support immigrant students with scholarships, and for lessons that involved LGBT themes.

The lawsuit alleges that the effects of the pause have already been immediate. Summer programs have already been canceled or put at risk, and classes for teacher development or English learning have been halted or downgraded. The states say they had no time to make up the funding gap, due to a lack of warning about the funding freeze.

In the lawsuit, the states say that the administration violated the Constitution by disregarding Congress’s spending authority and ran afoul of federal administrative law by freezing funds with no explicit reason. 

States continued by saying that the Trump administration has failed to abide by the procedures of the Impoundment Control Act, which bars the executive branch from withholding appropriated funds unless certain steps are followed.

This lawsuit echoes others that Democratic-led states have filed in response to the GOP megabill’s freezing or terminating federal program funding.

LAWLER PRESSES TRUMP TO UNFREEZE $6 BILLION IN AFTER-SCHOOL FUNDS

The states are seeking a preliminary injunction, and for the judge to compel the federal government to unfreeze the funding. 

The states involved in the lawsuit are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.