Sixteen Democrat-led states are suing the Trump administration after the Department of Education announced it would cut $1 billion in mental health funding for schools, accusing recipients of misusing the money for “woke” diversity initiatives rather than actually helping students.

The lawsuit, led by New York and California, comes as the Trump administration continues its overhaul of federal agencies, targeting programs that have been quietly used to push race-based hiring quotas and DEI policies into public schools under the guise of mental health.

“These grants are intended to improve American students’ mental health by funding additional mental health professionals in schools and on campuses,” explained Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education.

“Instead, under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden Administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” Biedermann said.

The states suing include New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

In her statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused the Trump administration of “abandoning our children when they need us most,” insisting the grants “helped thousands of students access critical mental health services at a time when young people are facing record levels of depression, trauma, and anxiety.”

But the Trump administration sees it differently. The Education Department’s review found that many of the programs funded under these grants used mental health as a smokescreen to embed DEI agendas, including mandatory race-based hiring quotas for counselors and workshops that focused on “equity frameworks” rather than clinical interventions for depression or anxiety.

One internal review, shared by a senior department official, noted that schools were using the funds to hold training on “unconscious bias” and “systemic racism” instead of adding licensed mental health professionals to campuses.

“This isn’t complicated,” one official said. “We’re not going to let taxpayer money meant to help students with mental health be diverted into woke social engineering.”

The lawsuit also reflects the broader tension between blue states and the Trump administration as it works to dismantle the vast infrastructure of DEI initiatives embedded in federal grant programs under Biden. The administration has also targeted similar programs in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, where officials say DEI requirements have been tied to funding eligibility in everything from school lunches to local health clinic grants.

Critics of the lawsuit point out that the same blue states suing to keep the funding untouched are also grappling with skyrocketing youth crime, mental health crises, and failing public schools, arguing that resources should be focused on proven mental health solutions rather than social justice workshops.

A parent activist group in California, for example, applauded the funding cuts, saying schools have been “too focused on political indoctrination and not focused enough on actually helping students who are struggling with real mental health needs.”

“Kids need therapists, not lectures on privilege,” one parent in San Francisco told a local outlet.

The lawsuit will test how far Trump’s team can push in cutting federal support for DEI-aligned initiatives embedded within mental health, education, and social services funding, an effort that has become a centerpiece of the administration’s second-term agenda to gut “woke” bureaucracy.

For now, the Biden-era mental health grants are on hold, and the court battle will determine whether blue states can force the Trump administration to restore funding to programs critics say have become vehicles for left-wing ideology rather than addressing the surging mental health needs of American students.