Judge blocks Trump order canceling teacher training grants after California, others sue

A U.S. District Court Judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to cancel an estimated $250 million in teacher-training grants across the country, including a significant cut affecting students preparing to staff high-need California schools.

Judge Myong J. Joun, of the federal District of Massachusetts, issued a temporary restraining order on Monday that called for the Trump administration to “immediately restore” the “pre-existing status quo prior to the termination.”

The Trump administration had canceled the grants through its Department of Education, working in conjunction with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a government agency and is headed by billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk.

In announcing the grant cuts Feb. 17, the Department of Education said the programs use taxpayer funds to “train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” that were “inappropriate and unnecessary.” It cited “critical race theory,; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); social justice activism; ‘anti-racism’; and instruction on white privilege and white supremacy.”

President Trump has pledged to rid schools and universities of “wokeness” and use federal funding as leverage. He also intends to dismantle the Department of Education, calling the agency “a big con job” infiltrated by “radicals, zealots, and Marxists” that misused taxpayer dollars.

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Judge Joun sided with the arguments laid out in a complaint filed by California and seven other Democrat-led states in his order, which is in force for 14 days while both sides make their cases.

Joun concluded, based on a preliminary review of available evidence, that the federal action to cancel the grants was “arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion” as well as “not in accordance with law.”

“Based on the evidence before me now, I find that Plaintiff States are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims,” the judge wrote.

In canceling the grants, the Trump administration had sent out form letters that cited a list of factors that may or may not have contributed to the cancellation of the grant, according to the lawsuit.

Those factors include “programs that promote or take part in DEI initiatives” as well as programs “that violate either the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; that conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; that are not free from fraud, abuse, or duplication; or that otherwise fail to serve the best interests of the United States,” according to the letter cited in the judge’s order.

Administration officials, including Trump, have made it clear that programs were at risk of losing funding if they have characteristics at odds with current administration policy — even if these elements were required by Congress and are part of fully executed contracts.

In issuing the order the judge said an action is illegally arbitrary and capricious if, for example “the agency relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider [or] entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.”

For a judge to issue a temporary restraining order, the jurist also must conclude that one side in a dispute would otherwise suffer irreparable harm. Judge Joun concluded that the states, in their arguments, satisfied this standard — and cited a California program as an example.

“The termination of funding for a program at the California State University with the objective of training and developing ‘highly qualified community-centered teachers who could staff and support high-need or high-poverty urban K-12 schools and students, particularly with regard in the areas of special education,’ has resulted in the loss of mentoring, training, and vital support for 26 students, and the loss of financial stipends for about 50 incoming students who need these stipends to participate in classroom teaching,” the judge wrote.

Moreover, the cancellations have “upended months, if not years of work required to implement programs that rely on these grants,” Joun concluded.

Joun gave the federal government 24 hours to comply.

The Trump administration and its leadership at the Department of Education had no immediate comment on the ruling. When the suit was filed last week, a department spokesperson said it would not comment on pending litigation. However, during a hearing on Monday, Michael Fitzgerald, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, had argued that the Education Department was within its rights to cancel the grants, the news agency Reuters reported.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called the ruling an important preliminary victory.

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“The Trump Administration recklessly and unlawfully terminated grants that had been awarded and obligated to K-12 teacher preparation programs in California and across the country — without any regard for the teachers and students who would pay the price,” Bonta said in a statement. “This includes $8 million which California universities and colleges planned to use between now and September to make sure our schools have the teachers they need come fall. Today’s decision is a crucial early victory to ensure these grant dollars continue to flow and our kids get the passionate, qualified, good teachers they deserve.”

The Department of Education cuts amounted to roughly $148 million in California and $102 million for the other states that sued: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. Nationally, the funding losses totaled $600 million. No Republican-led states filed suit. Three teacher groups filed a separate complaint last week in a Maryland federal court.

The litigation attempts to preserve two Obama-era grant programs Congress created to address teacher shortages in rural and urban areas and encourage college students studying STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math — to take on teaching jobs in K-12 education. The grant applicants also were, in the past, evaluated on their commitment to develop a diverse work force, including by training teachers from underrepresented groups.

Among the canceled programs is a $7.5-million grant at Cal State L.A. to train and certify 276 teachers over five years to work in high-need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified school districts. Under the program, teachers would focus on working with disabled students as well as on STEM subjects and bilingual education.

Nationally, there is a shortage of about 400,000 teachers, according to the Palo Alto-based Learning Policy Institute, including tens of thousands of positions in California.