The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, the National Education Association (on behalf of its members), and researchers have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over the discontinuation of 28 grants intended to train teachers working with English learners.
The National Professional Development grant program has historically offered a critical pipeline for educators serving a growing population of multilingual students, connecting research institutions with preservice and in-service teachers with training and affordable certification pathways. But since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the program has experienced significant upheaval, including:
- The loss of most, if not all, dedicated program officers following mass layoffs in the Education Department in early 2025;
- The discontinuation of 28 out of 107 active grants through letters from the department sent out in September 2025;
- A restructuring that moved the program out of the office for English language acquisition into the office of effective educator development programs after the Education Department disbanded OELA in May 2026.
The new lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island on June 3, argues the department ignored established criteria for evaluating multiyear grants, including for possible discontinuation, and instead targeted multiyear grants to terminate by citing isolated references to diversity, equity, and inclusion language in already approved applications, according to a statement by the law center.
The plaintiffs, including two discontinued grant personnel, are seeking to have the court “declare the Department of Education’s actions unlawful, vacate the 28 grant discontinuation notices, and order new grant-continuation decisions based on actual program performance rather than ideological screening.”
“I personally view this lawsuit as being about the U.S. Department of Education using grant terminations as a means to an end of censoring disfavored academic speech,” said Moriah Windus, a staff lawyer at the law center.
The Education Department did not respond to requests for comment.
In September 2025, Madi Biedermann, the deputy assistant secretary for communications for the Education Department, said “the department reawarded the majority of National Professional Development program grants and noncontinued those that do not align with the administration’s priorities.”
A tumultuous year for PD grantees
Laureen Avery, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and a former academic program manager at the University of California, Los Angeles, has participated in the program since 2017.
When grant program officers were laid off early last year, Avery joined other grantees in a listserv to help first-time participants navigate the logistics of updating reports and fill information gaps where needed.
She was part of a team of researchers awarded two grants—one in 2021 and another in 2022—that together ran a competency-based training program for certified teachers who wanted to build their skills in working with multilingual learners.
One of Avery’s grant programs was scheduled to end later this year, the other in 2027. For all the years she worked on the projects, she said her team “met every target, every goal, every reporting requirement.”
Then in September, her team received a discontinuation letter citing a project course description in the application materials that included a line asking, “What are the emerging pedagogical and social justice issues affecting engagement and readiness to learn for English learners?” The Education Department stated the course conflicted with the federal government’s best interests but did not elaborate on why or how, according to the lawsuit.
Avery’s team filed an appeal within 30 days, as did other discontinued grantees. She said her team offered to remove that language from the course description. They got an email response that the appeal was denied without any further explanation.
Following the discontinuation of the two grants, Avery’s team established a nonprofit organization to help fund teachers’ participation in the training program established by the federal grants. While contributions from nonprofit organizations and some school districts helped cover teachers’ tuition for the first half of the program, when it came down to teachers paying to complete the training, they couldn’t afford to continue, Avery said.
Shifting evaluation criteria at the heart of the lawsuit
Windus with the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that prior to the discontinuation letters, the Education Department had established criteria for PD multiyear grants focused on annual performance evaluations.
Grantees had to check their performance metrics, whether they met goals, and whether they managed funds appropriately. Congress appropriated more than $59 million for those grants for fiscal 2024 alone.
But rather than evaluating multiyear grants based on performance metrics or meeting targets, Windus said the agency “did little more than cherry-pick one or two sentences from grantees’ original applications and use those scattered phrases or piecemeal sentences to justify termination of these really large grants.”
The plaintiffs, including the NEA representing teachers who rely on the grant projects for PD and certification opportunities, want the Education Department to set aside those noncontinuation determinations and then make new determinations that are in accordance with the law, Windus said.
“We recognize that a court cannot direct an agency how to exercise its discretion, but it certainly can direct an agency to follow its applicable regulations and the relevant law and statute,” Windus said.
The Education Department, meanwhile, has recently put out a call for applications for a new cohort of 10 to 13 National Professional Development grants with a total funding allotment of $49 million.
When asked about applying to join the new cohort, Avery said she’s concerned about being disqualified because part of the application asks if the applicant has ever had a problem with a federal grant in the past.
“I don’t know how to answer that question,” she said.
