Federal judge rules in favor of lawsuit filed by New Mexico, 15 other states to restore mental health funding
A federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Education to restore school mental health funding that serves over 5,000 New Mexican students, the state Department of Justice said in a news release this week.
New Mexico was among 16 states that sued the federal government for canceling grants earlier this year for K-12 schools that were provided through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which provide access to school-based mental health professionals. The Friday ruling “ensures that more than 5,000 New Mexico students — including those in rural districts like Silver Consolidated Schools — will again have access to school-based mental health professionals,” the news release states. “From the beginning, our office has been deeply involved in this fight to protect mental health services for New Mexico students,” said Attorney General Raúl Torrez.
U.S. Sen.
Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., helped spearhead the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed in 2022 and which invested $1 billion for school-based mental health services. In April, the Education Department “sent boilerplate notices to grantees announcing that their grants would be discontinued — not due to performance issues, but because the program no longer aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities,” the news release stated.
States filed the lawsuit in June. U.S.
District Judge Kymberly Evanson of the Western District of Washington ruled the government’s suspension of the program was unlawful. “Nothing in the existing regulatory scheme comports with the Department’s view that multi-year grants may be discontinued whenever the political will to do so arises,” Evanson wrote. Heinrich in a statement called the ruling a “major victory for New Mexico students and families” and said it “restores funding that never should have been taken away in the first place.” He continued: “We will continue to hold this administration accountable and fight to make sure every dollar promised to our schools is delivered.” The Department of Education didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.