A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration illegally defunded college and career support for more than 1,000 New Hampshire students, saying the administration used arbitrary and vague reasons for discontinuing grants.
The administration has been ordered to re-evaluate the grants based on program success and performance.
The U.S. Department of Education abruptly terminated grants to more than 100 TRIO programs across the country in September citing unspecified illegal equity measures. That left nearly 1,200 middle and high school students in New Hampshire who are low-income or the first in their family to attend college suddenly without academic and career counselors.
The Council for Opportunity in Education sued the administration in federal court in Washington DC, calling the cuts “one of the most sweeping disruptions to TRIO in the program’s history.”
In a ruling Friday, Judge Tanya Chutkan said the U.S. Department of Education had failed to follow the law and rules when it used arbitrary and vague reasons for discontinuing the grants instead of assessing the work TRIO counselors were doing.
Chutkan said the department’s reasoning "strongly suggests the continuation determinations were made based on a keyword search for terms relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as opposed to any information regarding the discontinued grantees’ actual performance.”
Chutkan overturned the funding cuts and ordered the department to re-evaluate the grants based on the programs’ success and performance, as required. She gave the administration until the end of January to tell her how it is complying with her order.
New Hampshire has had a TRIO program for nearly 50 years. Its current grant was approved in 2021 by the first Trump administration, which required programs to include equity initiatives to receive funding.
Jessica Crowell, the director of New Hampshire's TRIO program, said she expects her program will have its money reinstated when it’s re-assessed on its performance, because the program has met or surpassed its goals for decades.
“It’s a good sign that we could potentially be able to start serving the students again,” Crowell said. “It will be important for us to continue to advocate for our students in New Hampshire so that something like this doesn't happen again.”
Crowell said challenges remain. She does not know how quickly the administration will re-evaluate the grant, and she would have to hire a new counseling team because her counselors left for new jobs when the money was cut.
One of those counselors, Adam Howard, of Dover, is still working with his seniors at Manchester West High School for free. Howard is now the director of the TRIO program at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts, which held onto its funding.
He spent the fall helping his students apply for financial aid, choose which colleges to apply to and complete complicated application forms, and he confirmed this week he’s still working with them.