These moves raise significant concerns that the federal government won’t be able to meet its legal obligations to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ().

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has numerous times that federal special education funding will continue flowing, no matter where the office and programs land within the government. But what she has not acknowledged — and what is troubling — is how moving the program to an agency like HHS inevitably shifts the focus of special ed from education to health care, thus pathologizing disabled students.

This is especially true considering HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made about children with autism, calling them tragic and doubting their ability to lead full and meaningful lives. His statements indicate a belief that a medical diagnosis absolutely leads to tragic outcomes — which is simply untrue. 

Framing students with disabilities solely in medical terms hinders their potential for growth by narrowly confining them to a diagnosis and perceived limitations — resulting in low expectations in school. As recently as the , this allowed most states to exclude disabled students from academic assessments. Many schools encouraged their parents to keep their children at home on testing days.

Since then, the country has steadily moved away from low expectations for students with disabilities. Under the Biden administration, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services issued specifically focused on setting a high bar for these children. The guidance included a focus on inclusive education practices to ensure students with disabilities have access to high-quality education with the opportunity to meet challenging goals. It also offered details about how states and districts could leverage federal funding to achieve those ends. 

Inclusive education practices are flexible and creative. Using such an approach, a team determining appropriate classroom settings during an Individualized Education Program meeting might decide that instead of placing a student in need of behavioral support in a segregated class of peers with disabilities, the student could be put in a general-education classroom, assisted by a paraprofessional or special education teacher. operates this way. Teachers or paraprofessionals accompany students with disabilities to general-education classes, providing behavioral and academic support in real time, innovatively and effectively meeting a child’s unique education needs. Instead of limiting children with disabilities, guidance and practices like these help students look to an expansive future. 

But between moving special education to HHS and the longer-term to convert IDEA grants into formula block grants, it will fall to the states to ensure that their special education laws and regulations are robust. IDEA includes minimum requirements for supporting disabled students. States can and should do more, including developing their own laws and guidance on issues like inclusion, challenging academic standards, teacher and service provider support and training, and requirements to provide services in an equitable manner to all students.

Families and advocates can work to hold states and districts accountable by, for example, pushing for state-level disaggregated reporting on timely provision of services, restrictive class and school placements, and disproportionate disciplinary practices. Additionally, states must work toward timely resolutions of and for any violations of disabled students’ civil rights. 

Leaving schools without timely access to federal funding to provide legally mandated services means students will unnecessarily struggle, and their lack of progress will be used as an indication of the failures of the current program. There have already been that shifts of education programs to other federal agencies have tied up resources in even more layers of bureaucracy. 

Shifting responsibility for specific IDEA and special education programs to HHS means that when states come looking for guidance, the staff with deep understanding of the interplay among civil rights, disability and education will no longer be available to help them. What guidance they do receive could be limited and unsupportive of students’ true intellectual, cognitive or physical capabilities.

Burying special education deep in the can only make things more difficult for children with disabilities. Finding essential services that families are desperate to reach will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of IDEA. What should be a time for celebrating milestones in increasing inclusivity and accessibility in America’s public schools has instead been fraught with fear and fights to retain the unique supports provided to disabled children through the Department of Education. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn’t. 

Harold Hinds, is a civil rights attorney and Ph.D. student at the New School’s School for Public Engagement, also contributed to this essay.

WASHINGTON — States must now provide “justification” that federal child care funds they receive are spent on “legitimate” providers in order to get those dollars, President Donald Trump’s administration announced. 

The Tuesday shift in policy came followingwhich prompted the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to freeze all child care payments to the state. 

HHS could not offer many specifics on how the review process will play out for other states, but clarified that the money in question is provided through the multibillion-dollar federal Child Care and Development Fund, or CCDF. 

“States will be required to provide documentation, such as written justification, receipts, or photographic evidence, demonstrating that funds are supporting legitimate child care providers,” Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for HHS, said in a statement to States Newsroom on Wednesday. 

CCDF provides federal funding to states, territories and tribes to help low-income families obtain child care. 

The program, administered within the Office of Child Care under HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, combines funding from the Child Care and Development Block Grant, or CCDBG, and the Child Care Entitlement to States, or CCES. 

Funding for CCDF in  stood at roughly $12.3 billion — comprising $8.75 billion from CCDBG and $3.55 billion from CCES. 

Head Start — a separate program that provides early childhood education, nutritious meals, health screenings and other support services to low-income families — does not appear to be affected. 

In a Tuesday  announcing the move, Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said he had “activated our defend the spend system for all ACF payments” and “starting today, all ACF payments across America will require a justification and a receipt or photo evidence before we send money to a state.” 

He clarified in a  shortly after that “funds will be released only when states prove they are being spent legitimately.” 

Funds undergo ‘regular audits’

“Federal funding enables millions of parents in every state and Congressional district to access and afford quality child care,” Sarah Rittling, executive director of First Five Years Fund, a federal advocacy group, said in a Wednesday statement. 

Rittling added that “these funds are essential to the nation’s well-being, allowing parents to work while ensuring their children are cared for and safe.” 



She also described the reports of potential fraud as “deeply concerning” and pointed out that “state oversight through regular audits is required by law to ensure that every dollar intended to protect and support young children is used properly and effectively.” 

“At the same time, we must ensure that nothing takes away from making sure funds for child care continue to reach the children and families who depend on them,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Saying autism is “among the most alarming public health crises in history,” President Donald Trump Monday announced that pregnant women’s use of acetaminophen, the pain reliever often sold under the brand name Tylenol, is a cause of the neurodevelopmental condition. 

“To have families destroyed over this is just terrible,” Trump said at a press conference, flanked by public health officials. “Don’t take it, just don’t take it.”

Most pregnant women, including those with high fevers, should avoid the drug and “tough it out,” he added.

An of existing research found children whose mothers took acetaminophen were more likely to be autistic than other babies. The scientists who conducted the analysis were careful to say that there is no evidence that the drug causes the condition. have had mixed results or discounted a cause and effect. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will immediately start the process of updating the over-the-counter analgesic’s safety label, said Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Federal officials will also seek approval for leucovorin, a form of folic acid sometimes prescribed off-label to treat autism. Evidence it works is scant.

“Our collective body of global research going back decades means that we have encyclopedic knowledge about the risks for autism, its possible causes and the highly variable experience of autistic individuals,” members of the Coalition of Autism Scientists said in a statement reacting to the administration’s announcement. “The data cited do not support the claim that Tylenol causes autism and leucovorin is a cure, and only stoke fear and falsely suggest hope when there is no simple answer.”

The president also urged parents to forgo giving their newborns the Hepatitis B vaccine, insisting inaccurately that the infection is transmitted only by sex. Trump also suggested, contrary to , that autism is not diagnosed in Amish people and Cubans — something he wrongly attributed to members of the religious sect eschewing vaccinations and his belief that people in Cuba can’t afford acetaminophen. 

Trump said he and Kennedy first discussed the idea that autism is “artificially induced” 20 years ago. “It’s turning out that we understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it, we think.”

As the clock ticks down on Robert F. Kennedy’s self-imposed deadline to identify and reveal a supposed cause of autism, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department secretary has stoked fresh fears within the disability community. 

In April, Kennedy promised that he would spearhead a “massive testing and research effort” that would establish autism’s cause “.” The study has yet to materialize, but in recent days the secretary has made statements that one researcher called “another round of ‘autism-cause roulette.’ ”

The churn “is creating public health whiplash” that may “derail the search for the actual truth,”Jessica Steier, CEO of — an organization of medical and public health specialists — recently told a group of journalists. 

At a heated Sept. 4 , Kennedy repeated misinformation about vaccines, which he has long blamed for what he calls an “epidemic” of autism, despite dozens of studies to the contrary. 

The following day, the Wall Street Journal reported he was planning to release a report blaming pregnant women’s use of acetaminophen and low maternal levels of a form of the vitamin folic acid as autism’s root cause — a link mainstream scientists were . 

The effort to blame acetaminophen sparked an angry backlash among disability advocates, who noted a painful history of attempting to attribute autism to poor parenting, including the supposed indifference of emotionally frosty “refrigerator mothers.”

Then, on Sept. 9, the department released “,” a 20-page report that said Kennedy has told the National Institutes of Health to move forward with compiling a massive database of medical and pharmacy records, insurance claims and even information generated by apps. The database will be used to research numerous conditions, including autism. 

President Donald Trump and Kennedy have given fresh fuel to longstanding fears that disease registries might be used to identify autistic people for forced sterilization, institutionalization and even death. Such a list was used by Nazi officials to identify children to be sent to “euthanasia clinics.”

Until the 1970s, similar lists were used to identify Americans to be subjected to forced sterilization and institutionalization. As a result, autism advocacy groups are often split on whether to recommend families participate in research that collects genetic or medical information.

In a urging civil commitment of homeless people and individuals with mental illnesses, Trump ordered federal housing and health officials to collect data on people who should be targeted. On Sunday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade apologized for declaring on air that people who are mentally ill and unhoused should be subject to “.”

An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that autism is a naturally occurring neurotype and not a mental illness. But because their needs frequently go unmet, autistic people often struggle with anxiety, depression and other conditions.    

Even as Trump has declared autism “” and Kennedy claimed it “,” the administration has slashed tens of millions of dollars in funding for efforts to improve autistic people’s lives, Medicaid and other programs that people with disabilities rely on. 

In an essay published in The New York Times last month, Steier Kennedy and other officials have used to counter the avalanche of evidence disproving a link between vaccines and autism. Since 1998, 70 studies have looked for such a connection.

Of 26 that purported to establish a link, 18 were written by David and Mark Geier, a Maryland father-and-son team who were cited by medical authorities for performing dangerous experiments on autistic children and whose work was routinely rejected by scholarly journals. Kennedy has assigned David Geier — who was disciplined in 2011 for practicing medicine without a license — in HHS’ new search for a cause.

The other eight studies that found a link were retracted or discredited.  

Kennedy has received in referral fees and profits from law firms suing vaccine manufacturers.

Research has found no link between autism and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, Steier told reporters last week. One recent Swedish study of 2.5 million children included 186,000 who had been exposed to the painkiller. The babies were 5% to 7% more likely than the other children studied to have ADHD or autism, but an analysis involving their neurotypical siblings disproved any causal relationship, she said.    

But five days after the Senate hearing, and about two weeks after Trump publicly pressed Kennedy about his deadline for identifying autism’s cause, The Atlantic published a story quoting William Parker, an immunologist whose efforts to publish papers supposedly establishing a link have been routinely rebuffed by mainline journals. Parker said he had spoken to Kennedy five times in recent weeks and met on Zoom with National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya. 

Parker, the magazine reported, was elated. “Nothing was happening and — boom!” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Even as Kennedy perseveres, advocates are critical of his stance toward autistic people, says Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. She is among those who were disappointed to see the secretary redouble his efforts to create a “disease registry” mixing public and private data that medical privacy laws have kept separate. 

When the plan for the new, sweeping federal dataset was first announced in April, Bhattacharya tried to allay fears by promising it would adhere to “state-of-the-art” privacy protections, but did not specify what those are. Privacy experts at the Brookings Institution and elsewhere say there is no legal roadmap to doing what Kennedy proposes.

Unlike many other agencies, the NIH is not bound by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the main law that restricts who can access private medical information. Instead, NIH  to the Privacy Act of 1974, which puts strict limits on the collection of personally identifiable information. 

Uproar notwithstanding, Kennedy’s new report did not clarify how individual medical records would be protected. Repeated requests for comment from HHS went unanswered. 

According to a report , people typically have no idea they will have little or no control over whether their health insurer or the maker of a wearable fitness tracker will sell or otherwise mine their data for commercial purposes. 

“Under the Trump administration’s plan, user health data would flow directly into an unregulated ecosystem of third-party apps where sensitive health details could be , or even cross-referenced with ,” the report warns. “In effect, the initiative centralizes some of the nation’s most sensitive records, while simultaneously lowering or ignoring guardrails that have long protected them.” 

Gross says she thinks it is unlikely NIH is compiling a registry that identifies autists. But instead of allaying concerns, Kennedy has pushed people with disabilities out of the conversation and eliminated research into their priorities.

The federal office that brings together autistic people, scholars and representatives of numerous cabinet departments to set research priorities, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, has not been active since Kennedy’s appointment, Gross says. HHS did not respond to questions about the committee’s status. 

Earlier this year, her organization lost a grant to collaborate on addressing longstanding and widely acknowledged gender bias and ableism in diagnosing autistic people by using a questionnaire asking about their experiences, rather than others’ subjective impressions.  

“It was a really promising project, and it was pretty far along,” says Gross. 

During the first four months of the year, at least $31 million, or 26%, was cut from NIH’s autism research budget. many of the reductions were made to adhere to executive orders on “gender ideology.”

“We haven’t even gotten to what is the utility of doing this,” Gross says, regarding ongoing efforts to resuscitate disproven theories. “How is this going to improve the lives of autistic people?”     

The federal government’s latest guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines make it difficult to know who, exactly, will be able to access shots this fall. While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some of his staff claim anyone will be able to access a shot in consultation with their doctor, medical groups are warning that the new guidance will impact a broad swath of people, including postpartum people and healthy children.

“For children and young adults that I see, there are constraints, and they are significant,” said Dr. Molly O’Shea, a pediatrician in Michigan and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

It might also take several more weeks to know who will be able to receive no-cost COVID-19 vaccines covered by health insurance. That decision partly depends on formal recommendations from a vaccine panel that isn’t scheduled to meet until mid-September. 

Actions by the Food and Drug Administration last week mean that none of the COVID-19 vaccines that are slated to be on the U.S. market this fall will have an emergency use authorization at the height of the pandemic. The removal of this designation means the drug company Pfizer will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines to very young children, limiting parents’ brand options and potentially impacting supply.

, and , the three main COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, have all shared news releases about what they’ve been approved to offer:

• Moderna, Pfizer or Novavax will offer shots to anyone who is 65 and older, irrespective of medical history.
• Pfizer will offer shots to anyone between the ages of five and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
• Moderna will offer shots to anyone between six months and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
• Novavax, the only company providing a non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, will offer shots to anyone between 12 and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

The vaccine panel known as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) is expected to make formal recommendations on these FDA-approved vaccines, and those recommendations have historically determined whether insurance providers will cover a vaccine at no cost under insurance.

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for information and comment from The 19th, but , Kennedy said: “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.” Separately, on a document from HHS stating the FDA’s actions do “not affect access to these vaccines for healthy individuals. These vaccines remain available to those who choose them in consultation with their healthcare provider.”

Dr. Marty Makary, FDA commissioner, : “100% of adults in this country can still get the vaccine if they choose. We are not limiting availability to anyone.”

But what that means practically for everyday people who want to access a COVID-19 shot — everything from whether their doctor will prescribe it, or if a pharmacy will be able to administer it, and whether there will be an out-of-pocket cost — is unclear for now. 

How will it impact postpartum people?

Pregnant people are expected to still have access to the vaccine because the CDC continues to list pregnancy as an underlying condition that puts an individual at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19. ( also includes chronic health conditions and immunocompromised conditions.)

But Kennedy, who has repeatedly questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines despite , that the CDC would no longer formally recommend such vaccines , a move that seemed to contradict . 

Lactating and postpartum individuals must have an underlying medical condition to be eligible for one of the FDA’s approved vaccines, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)’s understanding of the announcement. ACOG COVID-19 vaccination to people who are contemplating pregnancy, are pregnant, were recently pregnant or are now lactating.

“We recognize that now, disappointingly, only lactating and postpartum individuals with an underlying condition will be eligible for vaccination. Still, it remains critical that pregnant patients receive the vaccines so that they are able to provide passive immunity from COVID-19 to their infants in those first few months of life before they can be vaccinated,” said ACOG President Steven J. Fleischman in an email.

How will it impact healthy children?

Healthy children will likely still be able to access the COVID vaccine, but the cost for a parent or guardian, as well as availability, will be impacted by these decisions.

Charlotte A. Moser, co-director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said parents who want to get their kids the COVID-19 vaccine should still be able to do so through what is called in consultation with their child’s health care provider, according to the CDC’s current vaccine schedule. But it’s unclear whether this will change when ACIP meets again.

But physicians who prescribe a COVID-19 vaccine outside of the parameters of how the FDA approved them would be OKing use of the shot “off-label” — a designation that means a medical product is being used outside of how the FDA approved it. That raises questions about access and cost. Physicians might not be willing to prescribe off-label because of concerns about liability.

“I think that there will be a substantially smaller number of pediatricians, pharmacies, etc., who will be comfortable taking that risk,” O’Shea said.

Dr. Dial Hewlett, medical director of tuberculosis services at Westchester County Department of Health in New York and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said an off-label prescription might also not be covered by insurance.

“A mother or father can go in with their child and say, ‘I’d like for them to have the vaccine,’ but they may be told, ‘Well we’ll give it, but you’re going to have to pay $200,’” he said.

Depending on the circumstances, pharmacists may also not be able to provide off-label vaccines. Some states tie pharmacist immunization authority to FDA approval,which has the potential to create a hodgepodge of access. that CVS and Walgreens, the country’s largest pharmacy chains, have begun restricting COVID-19 shots in some states to people with a prescription. 

“There may be some variability from state to state, but it’s a big barrier if FDA approval is not there, and the FDA approvals have been pulled back from where they were previously,” Hewlett said.

The FDA announcement is “concerning,” added Moser, who noted that limiting Pfizer’s vaccine will make it more difficult for all children to get a COVID-19 vaccine this year because of anticipated supply limitations.

O’Shea, the pediatrician in Michigan, said her office is currently deciding how many COVID-19 shots to stock, and it’s proving tricky as they weigh the cost vs. demand — the percentage of children under 18 getting the shot .

“Figuring out how much we want to have at any one time, and how we are going to give it to people — this really makes it a lot more complicated,” she said.

What happens next?

Moser said the announcement adds confusion for providers and families, and noted that the unilateral approach by Kennedy so far when it comes to vaccine policy “removes hundreds of voices of clinicians and scientists that were part of the process.” Moser recently served on ACIP and . He has replaced the panel with people who do not have relevant experience.

“That army of voices ensured a process informed by clinical experience and scientific expertise to which the small group making these decisions now cannot possibly compare,” she said in an email.

The revamped ACIP panel is scheduled to meet over two days beginning on September 18. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who is chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, whether that panel has enough legitimacy to meet, especially amid . 

“Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” . “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”

AAP called Kennedy’s latest COVID guidelines “deeply troubling” and urged COVID vaccine decision-making to remain between medical experts and families. 

Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of AAP, said in a statement that any barrier to COVID-19 vaccination as the nation enters the respiratory virus season creates “a dangerous vulnerability for children and their families.”

“Any parent who wants their child vaccinated should have access to this vaccine,” she said, adding that HHS’ action “not only prevents this option for many families, but adds further confusion and stress for parents trying to make the best choices for their children.”

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of . .

The new rule was and published in the Monday by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, which oversees Head Start. Some immigrants, including refugees and those with a green card, would remain eligible to access Head Start services, but scores of others, including undocumented residents, DACA recipients and those with Temporary Protected Status or student visas, would not. Those on so-called U visas, typically survivors of domestic violence, drug trafficking or other serious crimes, would also no longer be eligible.

An estimated 115,000 Head Start children and families could be impacted, about 16% of the program’s total 2024 enrollment, according to an

“It’s incredibly inhumane what they’re doing,” said Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, “and it’s much more far reaching than undocumented people — not just because there are other populations [included], but it has a real chilling effect …  it’ll scare a lot of people that might have mixed status, or they may be perfectly legal, but they’re afraid.”

It’s not yet clear how the new restrictions would be implemented or tracked, and some lawyers and local Head Start leaders are encouraging providers to hold off on any changes until there is more clarity around their legal obligations. This is a particularly tricky moment to introduce such a radical change, experts noted, as many providers are currently recruiting students for the fall.

The new rule was enacted by rescinding a 1998 Clinton administration interpretation of the . That interpretation extended some federal public benefits to undocumented immigrants, which the Trump administration now claims “undercut” the original law, was “improper”  and “incentivize[d] illegal immigration.” The administration has embarked on an aggressive campaign to deport millions of undocumented residents, including by targeting students and attempting to end birthright citizenship.

The updated policy redefines Head Start as a “federal public benefit,” and in doing so, restricts access to early childhood education based on immigration status.

“This new rule is not only unprecedented in the program’s history, but it’s also completely at odds with the mandate for Head Start to provide early education to low-income children and their families,” said Linda Morris, an ACLU senior staff attorney and co-counsel on the lawsuit.

The administration’s stated goal is to, “restore compliance with federal law and ensure that taxpayer-funded program benefits intended for the American people are not diverted to subsidize illegal aliens,” according to an HHS Head Start is explicitly named as one of the impacted programs “to ensure enrollment … is reserved for American citizens from now on.”

At least 12 other federally funded programs are included in the new rule, such as the and the , which provides funds for people with serious mental illness experiencing homelessness.

The department’s announcement comes after months of layoffs, funding freezes and uncertainty for Head Start, which has reached more than and their families, the majority of them low income, since its inception in the 1960s. the $12 billion program served over 778,000 children from birth to age 5 and pregnant mothers and their families in urban, suburban and rural areas in all 50 states and six territories.

Along with providing early education and resources to kids, Head Start also connects families to community and federal assistance and can help provide a career pathway for parents. The 1,600 local agencies are funded by the federal government, though many also tap into state and local revenue sources.

The program has long been a target of the right, and the conservative playbook has called for its full elimination, arguing Head Start has “little or no long-term academic value for children.”

HHS estimates the new rule could lead to an increase of $374 million in services for American citizens, but that does not account for the cost to families losing services or to the broader economy as working parents lose access to child care, said the ACLU’s Morris.

“It’s important to remember that this new rule is not just an attack on immigrant communities. It’s also an attack on working families,” she added. “The social and economic impacts of this new rule will be felt beyond these families — it will be felt across communities, and really across the nation.”

In May, a coalition of parents and Head Start providers, represented by the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, the ACLU of Washington, ACLU of Illinois, the Impact Fund and others, filed in Washington state against the Trump administration. The plaintiffs alleged the federal government was seeking to illegally dismantle the Head Start program by shuttering half of the organization’s regional offices; laying off scores of staff; and implementing “sweeping and impermissibly vague bans on activities that promote or advance ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ ‘inclusion,’ and/or ‘accessibility.’”

In this updated application, they also argue that expanding the definition of “federal public benefit” to include Head Start is an illegal attempt to rewrite statutory law, which violates the as well as the U.S. Constitution. They are asking the court to prevent the administration from enforcing or implementing this new directive.

“No agency, including HHS, has ever defined early education as a federal public benefit,” Morris said. “This new rule from the administration is completely at odds with how the agency has interpreted Head Start programs [historically], and the administration hasn’t followed any of the processes that it needed to follow in order to implement a change of this kind.”

The rule will also lead to “waves of kids that are unprepared for school” entering the public school system, according to Ryan. HHS’s updated interpretation does not impact undocumented K-12 students’ access to a free, public education, which is Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, although that ruling has also become .

“These claims all stand together,” Ryan said, referring to the original lawsuit and this latest legal pushback.  “I really see it as a cumulative effort to destroy the Head Start program and to make lives harder for very low-income kids and families in the country.”