Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday blasted the Trump administration for slashing funds for service workers and volunteer efforts, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined a coalition suit that seeks to preserve federal funding for schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Following notice from the federal government of termination of AmeriCorps grant programs that support volunteer and service work, Newsom said in a statement, “The federal government is giving the middle finger to service. We will serve them with a lawsuit.”
Last week, Newsom said California will both challenge the funding freeze in court and accelerate recruitment for the California Service Corps, which is the largest such agency in the nation.
“When the devastating fires struck Los Angeles earlier this year, AmeriCorps members were on the ground, distributing supplies and supporting families,” according to the governor’s office. “The agency’s shutdown hamstrings these efforts.”
The California Service Corps consists of #CaliforniansForAll College Corps, California Climate Action Corps, Youth Service Corps and AmeriCorps California.
“Combined, it is a force larger than the Peace Corps and is mobilized at a time when California is addressing post-pandemic academic recovery, rebuilding from the LA fires and planning for the future of the state’s workforce,” according to Newsom’s office.
The federal government funds more than half of the California Climate Action Corps and about 5% of College Corps, officials said. The state fully funds the Youth Service Corps.
In the 2023-24 “service year,” 6,264 AmeriCorps members in California provided nearly 4.4 million hours of service, tutored and mentored 73,833 students, supported 17,000 foster youth with education and employment opportunities and planted 39,288 trees, the governor’s office reported. Corps members helped 26,000 households impacted by the LA wildfires and packed 21,000 food boxes.
Also Friday, California and other states filed a lawsuit challenging the federal Department of Education’s efforts to withhold funding from state and local agencies that refuse to abandon programs and policies that promote equal access to education in K-12 classrooms.
The lawsuit by California Attorney General Bonta and 18 other state attorneys general was filed a day after a Trump administration deadline for state officials to confirm that every school district in the nation had eliminated all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
In their interpretation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Trump administration officials believe that DEI programs amount to illegal discrimination.
According to Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order, “’Discriminatory equity ideology’ … treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations” that include “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.”
California, like many other states, refused to certify its compliance with the federal Education Department’s requirements, claiming no lawful or practical way exists to do so because of the department’s “vague, contradictory and unsupported” interpretation of Title VI, according to Bonta.
In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the attorneys general seek to prevent the federal Education Department from withholding any funding.
A representative from the Los Angeles Unified School District said in a statement to City News Service that the district would “continue to comply with federal and state nondiscrimination laws.” The request for assurance of compliance “is similar to other certifications from the USDOE. The district defers to the California Department of Education as the correspondence about the certification form was directed to state educational agencies.”
In a statement Friday, Chief Deputy Superintendent David Schapira from the California Department of Education affirmed “that it is not lawful for the federal government to restrict, pause, or rescind educational resources allocated by Congress outside of the statutory and constitutional processes for doing so. To reiterate our prior correspondence on this subject, there is nothing in state or federal law, including Title VI, that outlaws the broad concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, programs, instruction, or curriculum.”
Bonta said in a statement that the Education Department is “unapologetically abandoning its mission to ensure equal access to education with its latest threat to wholesale terminate congressionally mandated federal education funding.
“Let me be clear: The federal Department of Education is not trying to `combat’ discrimination with this latest order,” Bonta said. “Instead, it is using our nation’s foundational civil rights law as a pretext to coerce states into abandoning efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion through lawful programs and policies. Once again, the president has exceeded his authority under the Constitution and violated the law.”
The federal government provides California with $7.9 billion in congressionally mandated financial support annually for a wide range of needs and services pertaining to children and education, according to Bonta’s office.
The funding includes financial support intended to ensure that students from low-income families have the same access to high-quality education as their peers, provide special education services, recruit and train highly skilled and dedicated teachers, fund programming for non-native speakers to learn English, and provide support to vulnerable children in foster care and without housing, officials said.
As a condition of receiving these funds, state and local education agencies submit written declarations that they will comply with Title VI, which forbids discrimination based on race, color or national origin. California has consistently certified its compliance with Title VI and its regulations, Bonta said.
Bonta leads the multistate coalition in the lawsuit along with the attorneys general of New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and Minnesota.
On Thursday, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked Trump administration directives that threatened to cut DEI funding for public schools. The ruling was in a lawsuit by the National Education Assn. and the American Civil Liberties Union that alleges the Trump administration’s policies violate teachers’ due process and First Amendment rights.
A second judge on Thursday postponed the effective date of some U.S. Education Department guidance against DEI, ruling in a separate case filed in Maryland by the American Federation of Teachers.
Updated April 26, 2025, 3:11 p.m.
