\n<\/p>\n
Twenty-one state attorneys general and the AG of Washington, D.C., filed briefs in support of lawsuits challenging the cancellation of TRIO grants for programs such as Upward Bound at Montgomery County Community College.<\/p>\n
Linda Johnson\/Montgomery County Community College<\/p>\n
Democratic attorneys general from 21 states and Washington, D.C., filed briefs this week asking a court to reverse the Trump administration\u2019s rejection of grants supporting TRIO programs, which help disadvantaged students attend and graduate from colleges and universities.<\/p>\n
The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO programs such as Upward Bound, said about 100 grants were rejected or canceled last month after the Education Department delayed funding for thousands of grants that were slated to begin Sept.\u00a01. Another 23\u00a0programs lost funding earlier in the year. <\/p>\n
Those terminations deprived more than 43,600 students of services such as tutoring and financial aid help. (Trump\u2019s fiscal year 2026 budget request would end TRIO altogether, and all but a handful of staff in the TRIO grants office were fired early in the ongoing government shutdown.) <\/p>\n
On Sept. 30, the Council filed two lawsuits against the department and Education Secretary Linda McMahon in the U.S. District Court for D.C., alleging that the department canceled grants for complying with the General Education Provisions Act Equity Directive\u2014a requirement at the time of the applications. One suit argues the department faulted a University of New Hampshire application for allegedly saying its program would be \u201cidentifying and recruiting students of color and non-Caucasians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Council is requesting preliminary injunctions vacating the department\u2019s denials and ordering reconsideration of the grants. The attorneys general filed amicus briefs supporting this call. <\/p>\n
\u201cTRIO programs serving thousands of high-school and college students have closed, many of which have operated successfully for years with track records of success,\u201d the briefs say. \u201cStudents who relied on these programs\u2019 guidance and academic assistance are now being turned away. The result will be fewer students going to college and fewer students graduating college, to the detriment of impacted Amici States, their residents, and their economies.\u201d <\/p>\n
The AGs of Nevada and Massachusetts were the briefs\u2019 lead authors; they were joined by their counterparts in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Hawai\u2018i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty-one state attorneys general and the AG of Washington, D.C., filed briefs in support of lawsuits challenging the cancellation of TRIO grants for programs such as Upward Bound at Montgomery County Community College. Linda Johnson\/Montgomery County Community College Democratic attorneys general from 21 states and Washington, D.C., filed briefs this week asking a court to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[160,8854,4639,18503,3150,1561,12840],"class_list":{"0":"post-31916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-court","9":"tag-d-c","10":"tag-grant","11":"tag-rejections","12":"tag-reverse","13":"tag-states","14":"tag-trio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}