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The Council for Opportunity in Education Challenges Department of Education Discontinuation and Denial of TRIO Grants

August 5, 2025 — by Terrance L. Hamm

The Department’s decisions represent one of the most sweeping disruptions to TRIO in its history. They impact dozens of TRIO programs nationwide and deprive thousands of youth, adult learners, and veterans of college access and support services. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council for Opportunity in Education (COE) today announced that it has filed litigation on behalf of its members impacted by the U.S. Department of Education’s unprecedented refusal to award over 100 grants within the Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO).

This disruption includes the abrupt mid-cycle discontinuation of grants within the TRIO Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math-Science, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers, Talent Search, and McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement programs, as well as the denial of new grants to select applicants in the TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) program.

These actions collectively have resulted in the redirection of approximately $40 million in TRIO funding and the deprivation of academic and supportive services to 40,000 low-income, first-generation students, including military veterans, adult learners, and students with disabilities.

“Let me be clear—this is a fight about process,” said COE President Kimberly Jones. “We do not challenge the Department’s authority to hold federal grantees accountable or implement new priorities going forward. Our concern is that, in these instances, the Department has violated longstanding and well-established legal procedures for how it makes grant decisions.

“Rather than considering the criteria under the law, the Department relied on new policies that were not properly established. In doing so, it is denying institutions the ability to operate grants that were rightfully earned and successfully performed and, more importantly, robbing students of opportunities that Congress has already funded.” 

Student-facing TRIO programs are statutorily awarded grants for a term of five years, but continuation awards must be issued annually. This year, the Department of Education abruptly discontinued TRIO grants not set to expire until 2026 or later. It also denied applications for new SSS grants that would have begun this summer.

“Federal TRIO programs are not discretionary favors—they are competitive grants awarded on merit,” said Aaron Brown, Executive Vice President of COE. “When the Department disregards legislative and statutory procedures and substitutes politics for process, the students who need support most lose out. We cannot allow that precedent to stand.” 

COE has filed two separate lawsuits against the Department, one over the discontinued TRIO grants and the other over the denied SSS grants. Although the two cases have factual similarities, they are distinct in other ways that led COE to file them separately.

COE’s litigation focuses on failures by the Department of Education, including: 

  1. Retroactive Application of New Policies: The Department in 2025 rejected Student Support Services applications submitted in 2024 for including purported diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related language that was explicitly required by the Department itself in 2024, both through previously published priorities and the legally mandated GEPA Equity Directive. 
  2. Defiance of the Federal Rulemaking Process: Federal law uniquely requires the Department to engage in a notice-and-comment rulemaking process to establish priorities for discretionary grant programs. The Department denied grants based on new anti-DEI policies without going through the legally required process to implement the policies such that recipients could sufficiently address any concerns. 
  3. Withholding Scores and Evidence: The Department refused to award new SSS grants in the order of the peer-reviewed scores the applicants earned, and refused to release peer review scores and feedback to rejected SSS applicants. By statute, these scores must guide funding decisions. COE alleges that this information was suppressed because the rejected applicants scored high enough to win awards. 

“Our members work daily to provide tutoring, mentoring, and essential supports that help low-income and first-generation students graduate,” added Angelica Vialpando, COE’s Senior Vice President for Program and Professional Development. “By cancelling grants and refusing to follow the law, the Department has left thousands of students stranded.

“This litigation is about protecting current and future TRIO participants. Indeed, if the Department is permitted to disregard the law and regulations, that puts our members’ grants at risk with each change in administration or change in the Secretary of the Department,” said Vialpando. 

For the first time in decades, entire communities face the elimination of TRIO programs that have served them for generations. As one applicant, whose proposal was denied, shared: “We answered every prompt, met every priority, and achieved peer review scores that should have earned us funding. To be denied, not because of our merit, but because the Department changed the rules after the fact, feels like a betrayal of our students. They are the ones who will pay the price.” 

To learn more about the Federal TRIO Programs, visit coenet.org.  

Media Inquiries

For media inquiries or to arrange an interview, please contact Terrance L. Hamm, vice president for communications and marketing at COE via email at [email protected] or call (202) 347-7430.

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