The U.S. Department of Education has reinstated two grants totaling $270 million to support mental health services in public schools, nearly five months after discontinuing them because of the Biden administration’s focus on diversity priorities.

State education departments and school districts may now apply for the $180 million School-Based Mental Health Grant and the $90 million Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant, the department said in a pair of notices on Sept. 29.

The terms of the grants have been rewritten to eliminate Biden-era diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals and instead focus solely on increasing the number of mental health professionals in schools.

Under the Biden administration, applicants who sought the two grants were encouraged to present plans that would increase the diversity of mental health experts in schools.

In a 2022 guideline, grant applicants were told they could improve their chances of winning awards by committing to hiring more “services providers from diverse backgrounds or from the communities they serve” and making sure that all services providers are “trained in inclusive practices,” including support for students who do not speak English.

When asked to define “diverse background,” the Biden Education Department said the term referred to “backgrounds that reflect the communities, identities, races, ethnicities, abilities, and cultures of the students.”

The Trump administration’s solicitations explicitly state that grantees should not use their awards for “gender ideology, political activism, racial stereotyping, or hostile environments for students of particular races.”

The reinstated grants are now limited to three priorities: building state-level capacity to address a shortage of school psychologists, building local capacity to do the same, and increasing the number of credentialed school psychologists across the nation.

The Education Department in April told grant recipients that their awards were terminated because the earlier priorities did not align with the Trump administration’s position that DEI goals violate anti-discrimination laws.

“Under the deeply flawed priorities of the Biden administration, grant recipients used the funding to implement race-based actions like recruiting quotas in ways that have nothing to do with mental health and could hurt the very students the grants are supposed to help,” Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the department, told multiple media outlets at that time.

“We owe it to American families to ensure that taxpayer dollars are supporting evidence-based practices that are truly focused on improving students’ mental health.”

The decision triggered a 16-state lawsuit spearheaded by Washington. According to the complaint, filed at the end of June in a federal court in Seattle, canceling the two grants put roughly $1 billion of school mental health funding at risk.

New York stood to lose at least $19 million, while California faced cuts of at least $98 million spread across 21 county education offices and local districts, the complaint said. In Washington, 35 school districts in the state’s northwest corner had used the grants to hire 19 new mental health experts and expand services for students who previously lacked access because of geographic isolation or difficulties navigating community-based care.

“These changes essentially say school counselors and social workers can’t support student mental health, a nonsensical approach that limits the tools we have to help kids succeed,” Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said when announcing the lawsuit. “The proposals may also limit resources for students who don’t speak English or who are gender diverse—despite the department’s obligation to improve the safety and well-being of all students.”

In response to a request for comments on how the development might affect the pending case, a spokesperson for Brown’s office maintained that the basis of the lawsuit still stands.

“Our understanding is that they have not reinstated the grants,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “The department announced new grant competitions that we are seeking to enjoin, because once the department awards new grants, it will not have money for our grants—which is unlawful.”

The School-Based Mental Health Services program is designed to help districts recruit and retain qualified staff, while the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration program focuses on training and preparing future school psychologists.

Both programs were created and funded through the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed in the aftermath of the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a teenager killed 19 children and two adults.

The legislation dedicated billions of dollars to address what experts have called a growing mental health crisis among young Americans.