California joined 23 other states and the District of Columbia in suing the federal government Monday for the release of more than $6 billion in federal education funding that never arrived, including $939 million for California, Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
Bonta, a Democrat, filed the legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, he said in an announcement with attorneys general from Colorado, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The lawsuit seeks the release of the $6 billion in federal funds for education programs that Congress had approved but the Trump administration allegedly did not release when expected on July 1. The suit argues that Trump and U.S. education secretary Linda McMahon violated the U.S. Constitution and federal statutes when they withheld the funding.
“As a former businessman, you’d think he’d have learned that you can’t rack up a list of unpaid debts and get away with it,” Bonta said of Trump when speaking to reporters on Monday. “Our states are owed the billions in federal funding that Trump and McMahon have frozen, are we’re going to court to see that it is reinstated.”
The White House did not respond Monday morning to a request for comment.
According to Bonta’s office, California was set to receive $939 million in federal funds for state education programs near July 1, when the state’s new budget kicked in.
The state uses the funds for academic summer-school programs benefitting “disadvantaged” children, programs for children of migrant farmworkers, English-language tutoring and more, Bonta said. The migrant children education initiative serves 78,000 students in 20 regional programs statewide, according to Bonta.
Instead, the U.S. Department of Education sent California a short email on June 30 that said the agency was still reviewing funding applications, “and decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year,” according to the lawsuit.
“The department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the president’s priorities and the department’s statutory responsibilities,” the note said, according to the lawsuit.
Neither Bonta nor the lawsuit allege a motivation behind the unpaid funds.
Since taking office, Trump has moved to downsize the U.S. Department of Education. The agency’s top officials were also considering withholding federal funding to California schools over the state’s policies on transgender athletes, McMahon said last month. In a separate pending lawsuit, California and states sued the Trump administration in April over threats to cut funding unless states eliminated DEI initiatives in schools.
Bonta said the funding freeze will leave parents without child care and students will fall behind.
“Trump may wrongly claim that he’s going after waste, fraud and abuse, but the unfortunate irony is the long term cost of Trump’s unlawful attack on our students, families, schools, communities, is tremendous,” he said.
The lawsuit is the 31st that Bonta has filed on behalf of California since Trump began his second term. About a quarter of those deal with education, Bonta said. In late June, California sued the U.S. Department of Education over federal mental health grants for schools, including counselors for low-income students. That case is winding through the courts.