Ford challenges Trump cuts to Nevada schools in new lawsuit

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford joined a lawsuit Thursday suing the U.S. Department of Education to restore states’ access to several pandemic-era programs supporting low-income and unhoused students, his office said in a news release.

Ford and 15 other state’s attorneys general and the Pennsylvania governor said in a March 28 letter that the agency canceled “hundreds of millions of dollars in grants” from the American Rescue Plan Act, the COVID-19 pandemic stimulus bill passed in 2021. The complaint argues the funding provided support to those students and “other services to address the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on K-12 students.”

“The cuts to these programs are unlawful, and they will have a devastating impact on Nevada’s children,” Ford said in the release. “Every time the Trump Administration violates the law and negatively impacts Nevadans, my office will see him in court; this case is no different.”

The 55-page lawsuit is the latest of Democratic-led attorneys general’s effort to litigate the Trump administration’s federal budget cuts and other sweeping changes from the executive branch. Ford has also sued over President Donald Trump’s funding cuts to health and science research agencies, federal worker layoffs and executive orders targeting election reform and birthright citizenship.

The Trump administration has said widespread funding cuts and cancellations across the federal government are meant to address the nation’s $1.15 trillion federal deficit. Other cuts were made in response to Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Three programs are the subject of the lawsuit: the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program, or ESSER; the Homeless Children and Youth program, or HCY; and the Emergency Assistance to Nonpublic Schools program, or EANS. The complainant states say they received billions from the federal government for these programs. Multiple states say they had hundreds of millions still in the coffers.

The Trump administration argued the funds shouldn’t used so long after the emergency event. In a statement, Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said, “COVID is over.”

“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,” Biedermann said in the statement. “The Department established a process to consider funding extension requests on a project-specific basis where it can be demonstrated that funds are being used directly mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on student learning. If the states suing were using these funds to remediate learning loss and support students, there would be no need for this lawsuit.”

It’s unclear how much Nevada received from those three programs because the amounts were not available at the time of the complaint, according to the suit. Many states said they were allocated billions. California, for example, was awarded about $15.4 billion and estimated it had around $205 million left unliquidated.

Clark County School District appears to have dodged budget holes from these program cuts. A spokesperson for the Clark County School District said it spent all the ESSER funds it had received for addressing learning loss and pandemic response.

“Our requests for all spending reimbursements were completed on time for the March 28 deadline imposed by the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Ford and the coalition seek a court order to reverse the terminations and prevent the department from changing its position so the states can access that funding, which was supposed to be available through March 2026, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.