Attorney General Mayes has decisively joined a group of her peers, 21 in total, to collectively sue the Trump Administration. The legal battle is a stance against the Administration's effort to cull billions in federal funding from various state initiatives, a move deemed both unprecedented and unlawful by the officials involved. The coalition alleges that they have manipulated a single clause in federal regulations to justify the sweeping cuts. These reductions impact key areas such as violent crime prevention, education, clean water, scientific research, and public health, to name a few.
The legal action is a response to the Administration's directive, which appears to willfully, and without precedent, utilize a clause allowing the termination of grants that "no longer effectuates... agency priorities." This newfound reliance on those five words has caused a seismic shift, according to the coalition. In Arizona, the tangible effects are stark, with significant funding cuts affecting essential programs and inevitably leading to around 500 layoffs in the state's Department of Economic Security as of May 22, 2025. This sweeping maneuver has also stripped more than $8 million from the University of Arizona in EPA funds and siphoned resources from Arizona's MBDA Business Center. These examples serve only as a cross-section of the national repercussions, stirring a multitude of state leaders to action.
Spearheaded by Attorney General Mayes, the lawsuit was filed in the District of Massachusetts, seeking a declaratory judgment to challenge the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and their use of the contentious OMB regulation. The coalition aims to prove that this maneuver — to unilaterally and retroactively shift agency priorities and thus withdraw funding, is not authorized under the existing regulation. The officials are requesting the courts to either clarify the scope of the regulation or void the Trump Administration's current practice of grant terminations.
The case makes a compelling argument that the regulation was never intended to allow for abrupt terminations based on shifting agency preferences. The complaint, made available on the Attorney General's website, articulates this assertively. Attorney General Mayes stated, "President Trump cannot illegally and arbitrarily rip away funding Arizonans rely on and we're fighting back in court to hold the administration accountable under the law." Also implicated in the lawsuit are multiple federal agencies accused of enacting these sweeping terminations based on a conveniently adapted view of the OMB regulation.
The coalition's lawsuit includes the participation of the Attorneys General from New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and Pennsylvania. This united front underscores the severity of their concern, and the shared impact on their states. With potentially hundreds of billions of dollars at stake annually, the outcome of this lawsuit could profoundly influence federal and state relations moving forward.
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