Attorney General Neronha co-leads coalition in suing Trump Administration for freezing $6.8 billion in education funds

Published on Monday, July 14, 2025

Attorney General Peter F. Neronha today co-led a coalition of 23 attorneys general and two governors in filing a lawsuit in Rhode Island against the Trump Administration for its unconstitutional, unlawful, and arbitrary decision to freeze funding for six longstanding programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education. Without this funding, many educational programs will shutter – already, ongoing summer learning programs have been left unfunded.

The attorneys general argue that the funding freeze violates the federal funding statutes and Appropriations Act, Apportionment, the Administrative Procedures Act, the separation of powers doctrine, equitable ultra vires, and the Presentment Clause, and ask the court for declaratory and injunctive relief.

In Rhode Island, an estimated $29 million in federal education funding is frozen.

“Education is critically important to Americans’ development, mobility, and success, which is probably why the President seeks to undermine it,” said Attorney General Neronha. “Each and every time this Administration unlawfully withholds critical federal funding, they know that what they are doing is unconstitutional, and yet they ignore the law anyway. This time, the President is taking aim at the growth and enrichment of our young people by freezing essential funding, approved by Congress, for a wide range of important educational programs, leaving the Rhode Island Department of Education and similar agencies across the country to scramble. Further, we know that the pandemic has had a dramatically negative impact on our kids’ education, and with this latest move, the Administration clearly intends to add insult to injury. We must collectively reject their attempts to stifle and oppress everyday Americans. Enough is enough.”

For decades, Rhode Island and other states have used funding under these programs to carry out a broad range of programs and services, including educational programs for migratory children and 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.

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 State plans that the Department of Education has already approved. The States have received these funds, without incident, for decades, including as recently as last year. However, this year, on June 30, state agencies across the country received a notification announcing that the Department of Education would not be “obligating funds” for six formula funding programs on July 1.

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. Essential summer school and afterschool programs, which provide childcare to working parents of school age children, are already being impacted. 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.

But it is Congress, not the Executive Branch, that possesses the power of the purse. The Constitution does not permit the Executive Branch the 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. In today’s lawsuit, the coalition asked 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.

Attorney General Neronha co-leads the coalition together with the attorneys general of California, Colorado, and Massachusetts, and is joined in filing the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

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