A federal judge in Manhattan has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from clawing back over $1.1 billion in unspent pandemic stimulus grants to K-12 schools.
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday requiring the Education Department to uphold a Biden administration extension of the deadline for states to spend the money.
Referring to a lawsuit that 15 states and the District of Columbia filed last month, he said the agency is barred from recovering the money “during the pendency of this litigation or until further order of the Court.”
“The Defendants must provide written notice of this Order to all personnel within [the Education Department],” Judge Ramos, an Obama appointee, wrote in a two-page order that did not explain his reasoning.
The federal government allocated $189.5 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief grants for K-12 campuses to implement public health restrictions and offset learning losses during pandemic-induced campus lockdowns.
Of that sum, the Trump administration approved $67.5 billion and the Biden administration $122 billion.
The Biden administration extended the deadline to spend the money several times, most recently bumping it from January 2025 to March 2026.
A coalition of Democratic attorneys general led by New York, California, Pennsylvania and Maryland filed the lawsuit after Education Secretary Linda McMahon canceled this last extension on March 28.
Her decision created a $134.2 million budget hole in New York public schools and a $232.1 million shortfall in Maryland, the most of any state.
According to Maryland officials, who revised that figure downward from a higher number last week, Tuesday’s ruling offers welcome relief to K-12 campuses.
“COVID-19 may be over, but its impact is still being felt in schools across our State and nation, as reading and math scores remain lower than pre-pandemic levels and students continue to struggle with behavioral health issues since schools reopened,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.
According to the White House, which has launched a widespread effort to cut wasteful government spending, most states long ago exhausted any legitimate reason for spending stimulus money on COVID-19 recovery.
Last month, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency had “established a process to consider funding extension requests on a project-specific basis where it can be demonstrated that funds are being used to directly mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on student learning.”
“COVID is over,” the spokesperson said. “States and school districts can no longer claim they are spending their emergency pandemic funds on ‘COVID relief’ when there are numerous documented examples of abuse and misuse.”
Before Tuesday’s ruling, school districts nationwide had planned massive budget cuts and layoffs as they scrambled to cope with the Trump administration tearing up the checks.
According to Burbio, a website that tracks K-12 budgets, the cuts hit large school districts with shrinking enrollments the hardest.
Supporters of the Trump administration say Congress allocated the money for schools to implement public health restrictions and offset learning losses during pandemic-induced lockdowns.
Hundreds of schools with dwindling headcounts also used relief funds to upgrade technology, create emotional support programs and hire extra staff they could never hope to maintain.
Nina Rees, a former Education Department official in the George W. Bush administration, pointed to a lack of evidence that the spending spree did anything to stop the decline in U.S. math and reading scores.
“I wish the funds had some strings attached to them, or some form of accountability,” Ms. Rees said.
