Federal Accountability

OAKLAND — Co-leading a coalition of 24 attorneys general and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration for imposing unlawful conditions on billions of dollars in federal grants that help States and local governments prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters. Specifically, the Administration is requiring States to adopt its preferred policies to receive these grants, including complying with new immigration enforcement mandates, accepting new election administration requirements, and allowing funding to be terminated based on vague and subjective criteria. The grants are administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Attorney General Bonta and other attorneys general have previously challenged and blocked two similar attempts involving these same grant programs. In today’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the coalition argues that DHS and FEMA’s latest grant conditions are, once again, unlawful and unconstitutional.

“President Trump has little support for both his mass deportation agenda and his baseless claims of election fraud, so instead, he’s trying to bully state and local governments into adopting his preferred policies in exchange for much-needed funding,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “The Administration has already lost similar fights in court, and we expect this latest unlawful attempt to fail as well. Our communities deserve better than to have essential resources caught up in political games.”

"Time after time, courts have told Trump’s corrupt administration that it can't coerce California into doing its bidding by threatening to withhold public safety funding," said Governor Gavin Newsom. "Yet, they’re coming back for more. This time they’re demanding states rewrite their own election laws to access money that pays for public safety readiness and response, and that Congress already approved. We simply won’t allow it.”

The grants at issue include the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP), which Congress established in direct response to the horrific events of September 11, 2001, to help States and local governments prevent, prepare for, protect against, and respond to acts of terrorism. California and its cities receive $150 million in HSGP funding each year for these purposes. Other FEMA-administered grant programs are also impacted, such as the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, which helps States pay for emergency management staff who prepare for and respond to natural disasters, mass casualty events, and other disasters. 

The coalition alleges that the Administration is attempting to impose a series of sweeping new requirements on States, including:

• Election administration requirements: The Administration is seeking to force States to adopt its preferred election policies as a condition of receiving HSGP funds, including verifying voter citizenship through an error-prone federal system, transitioning to hand-marked paper ballots, and conducting ballot reconciliation using an undefined federal methodology. States that do not comply could lose 20% of their HSGP awards.
• Immigration enforcement requirements: The Administration is attempting to condition FEMA grants on States’ assistance with federal civil immigration enforcement, although the courts previously blocked these same conditions.
• Broad FEMA termination authority: The Administration is seeking to give FEMA broad authority to cut off funding at any time based on vague and subjective “agency priorities,” creating uncertainty over emergency management resources Congress provided to support States and local communities.

The coalition argues that the requirements are unlawful because Congress never gave DHS or FEMA authority to impose sweeping conditions on these federal grants, the agencies failed to follow required decision-making procedures, and the requirements violate the Spending Clause by coercing States through vague and ambiguous funding conditions that are entirely unrelated to the purposes of the funding programs.

Attorney General Bonta co-led two similar and successful lawsuits in 2025, each in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, challenging DHS’s efforts to condition billions in federal emergency funding on states’ agreement to enforce federal immigration law and DHS’s subsequent attempt to unlawfully reallocate federal homeland security funding away from jurisdictions it viewed as insufficiently supportive of President Trump’s political agenda. 

Attorney General Bonta is co-leading today’s lawsuit alongside Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha. They were joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta, as part of a multistate coalition, filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard’s lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s unjustified and illegal decision to freeze and terminate more than $2 billion in federal research grant funding. The Trump Administration’s attacks come in retaliation for Harvard’s refusal to cave to the President's demands that the university restructure its internal governance, change its hiring and admissions practices, and modify what it teaches its students to align with the federal government’s views. In the brief, the attorneys general urge the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to uphold the lower court’s decision blocking the Administration from implementing or enforcing its unlawful funding freeze orders.
 
“The Trump Administration’s attacks against Harvard are unlawful, retaliatory, and fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law,” said Attorney General Bonta. “We cannot allow the federal government to weaponize grant funding as leverage to force colleges and universities to cave to political demands. California stands with Harvard and in support of academic independence, free speech, and the vital research that supports our communities.”
 
Last year, the Trump Administration froze and terminated billions in grants in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Trump Administration’s unlawful actions have upended Harvard’s ability to conduct vital research. In October 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled in Harvard’s favor and vacated the grant terminations. The Trump Administration subsequently appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
 
In the amicus brief, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that if the Trump Administration’s attack on Harvard is not blocked, it would give the Administration license to take similar actions against other universities. Defunding these critical institutions would inflict severe harm on state economies, medical initiatives, and states’ ability to train the next generation of researchers. In California, for example, the University of California system contributed $82 billion in economic output in a single year and serves as the state’s third-largest employer behind only the state and federal governments. Undergraduate alumni from California institutions like Berkeley and Stanford have founded over 2,600 venture-backed companies helping maintain the competitiveness and prestige of our colleges and universities.
 
Attorney General Bonta is committed to defending educational institutions and protecting critical state funding from political overreach. Attorney General Bonta previously joined a multistate coalition at the district court level in filing a similar amicus brief to safeguard higher education, free speech, and academic freedom. By continuing this fight on appeal, Attorney General Bonta is working to ensure public university systems, including the UC and CSU systems, remain safe from similar politically motivated financial retaliation.
 
In filing the brief, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today co-led a coalition of 19 attorneys general and one city in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging its rule that would weaken regulations designed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in commercial equipment. HFCs are chemicals used for refrigeration and cooling that are up to 10,000 times more potent than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide; they are among the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions both in the United States and around the world. The rule rolls back some of the existing deadlines for industry to move from using HFCs as refrigerant gases to refrigerants with less greenhouse effect, known as Global Warming Potential (GWP). This undermines EPA’s current regulations under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act), which are designed to phase out HFCs by approximately 85% by 2036. In the petition filed today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition allege that EPA’s new rule is contrary to law and that EPA fails to justify its change in position. 

“Across the country, communities are enduring record-breaking temperatures, devastating floods, and raging wildfires. They are clear warnings that our planet is approaching a dangerous climate tipping point. Yet, the Trump Administration is weakening critical environmental safeguards that combat the climate crisis, including restrictions on the super pollutant hydrofluorocarbons — one of the most powerful categories of greenhouse gases driving this crisis,” said Attorney General Bonta. “We’re taking the Trump Administration to court, yet again, for its effort to skirt the law with this final rule. As the Trump Administration continues to bury its head in the sand at the expense of our environment, California will continue to confront the climate crisis head-on and hold the Administration accountable for breaking the law.”   

HFCs are widely used in commercial, residential, and mobile cooling systems, such as air conditioning and refrigeration. Once deemed a safer alternative for the environment relative to ozone-depleting substances (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs), which damage the earth’s ozone layer, HFCs were later discovered to pose a major threat to the climate. With greenhouse effects, or GWPs, hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year period, HFCs have been projected to contribute up to 0.5 degrees Celsius, about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, to global surface warming by 2100 if they are not controlled. Because of this extreme potency, HFCs’ increasing share of emissions, and their relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere, reducing consumption and production of HFCs is particularly important for addressing climate change.

In December 2020, Congress passed the AIM Act on a bipartisan basis and President Trump signed it into law. The AIM Act provides a framework through which the United States will phase out the production and consumption of HFCs by about 85% by 2036. Under the prior regulations, specific sectors that use equipment with refrigerant gases are limited to gases with lower GWP, resulting in a gradual phaseout of HFC use. For example, currently, new remote condensing systems — typically used to refrigerate food by retailers like supermarkets, bakeries, and convenience stores — are limited to using refrigerants with 150 to 300 GWP, depending on the system. With EPA’s rollback, the maximum GWP of these refrigerants can increase to 1,400 from January 1, 2026, until 2032. 

If allowed to move forward, the rule will increase HFC emissions, accelerating the damage already threatening our planet from climate change. In California, nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2014. As temperature continues to rise, so do the consequences: more heat-related illnesses, intensifying drought conditions, and increasingly catastrophic wildfires. The Eaton and Palisades fires recently illustrated the devastating consequences of climate change. Together, they claimed 30 lives, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, and caused an estimated $76 billion to $131 billion in damage. The conditions that made these fires so destructive are consistent with what the science has long warned us to expect from a warming climate. They underscore the urgent need to combat climate change. 

In the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition allege that EPA’s final rule is arbitrary and capricious and violates the AIM Act. 

In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta co-led a coalition of attorneys general alongside Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Washington Attorney General Nick Brown. They were joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the City of New York. 

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a second petition against the Trump Administration, challenging the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) recent issuance of a new “non-emergency special permit” for Sable Offshore Corp. (Sable) to transport oil through two California onshore oil pipelines, known as Lines CA-324 and CA-325, in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Kern counties. This permit is the latest maneuver in PHMSA’s continuing effort to illegally assert federal jurisdiction over Lines CA-324 and 325 by reclassifying them as “interstate” and authorize their restart and operation in violation of state and federal law. In December 2025, at the request of Sable, PHMSA issued Sable an emergency permit waiving compliance with its own safety regulation requiring evaluation and remediation of pipeline corrosion. That emergency permit, alongside PHMSA’s reclassification of the pipelines as interstate, and its approval of Sable’s restart plan, are currently being challenged in court by the Attorney General and the Office of the State Fire Marshal. In today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and the Office of the State Fire Marshal challenge PHMSA’s issuance of the new permit as unlawful. 
 
“California's coastline is not for sale to enrich the President’s fossil fuel friends,” said Attorney General Bonta. “No matter how many times the Trump Administration attempts to help Sable evade state regulation, my office will see them in court at every illegal turn and continue to protect California’s communities and environment.”
 
“Our focus remains on one priority: protecting public safety,” said Chief Daniel Berlant, California State Fire Marshal. “Our pipeline safety requirements are rigorous, grounded in engineering and risk reduction, and designed to safeguard communities and the environment.”
 
On December 17, 2025, PHMSA illegally reclassified Lines CA-324 and CA-325 that run onshore from Santa Barbara County to Kern County as “interstate.” The reclassification purports to shift regulatory oversight of the pipelines from the Office of the State Fire Marshal to PHMSA. Before December 17, 2025, PHMSA had for years classified these onshore pipelines as intrastate pipelines subject to state safety regulation and oversight. On December 22, 2025, PHMSA approved Sable’s plan to restart oil production based on President Trump’s bogus “National Energy Emergency” Executive Order that Attorney General Bonta previously challenged. In January, Attorney General Bonta filed a lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging PHMSA’s orders that illegally purported to assert exclusive federal jurisdiction over the onshore Lines CA-324 and CA-325 by reclassifying them as “interstate,” issuing a restart approval for Sable, and providing Sable an emergency permit waiving regulatory compliance in order for Sable to restart oil transport through the pipelines. In March, the Attorney General challenged Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright’s improper order under the Defense Production Act seeking to halt its use as the basis for Sable’s unlawful restart of the pipelines. The order unlawfully purports to supersede state law, state court orders, and a federal court-approved Consent Decree to allow Sable to restart oil transport through the pipelines. In May, the Attorney General filed a motion for a preliminary injunction urging the court to enjoin the Wright Order and immediately block Sable’s transportation of oil through the pipelines. 
 
The onshore pipelines had been shut down for a decade since the 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill, when a corroded segment of one pipeline ruptured and released more than 120,000 gallons of crude oil near Santa Barbara, at least 21,000 gallons of which entered the Pacific Ocean. The oil spill caused serious harm to public health and safety including releasing hazardous oil and fumes that sickened communities, contaminated coastal waters, harmed hundreds of marine mammals and seabirds, and shut down beaches and fisheries for months — damaging local economies. It resulted in a Consent Decree — to which PHMSA is a party — that expressly acknowledges and approves the State Fire Marshal’s role in reviewing and approving any planned restart of the onshore pipelines. PHMSA has significantly departed from this agreement, which was approved by a federal court, and the way in which PHMSA historically viewed the pipelines.
 
In the lawsuit, filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Attorney General and the State Fire Marshal challenge PHMSA’s issuance of a non-emergency permit for Sable and the new reasoning underlying PHMSA’s attempt to assert federal jurisdiction over Lines CA-324 and CA-325 as unlawful. 

Since January 2025, the Trump Administration has baselessly relied on a single subclause buried deep in federal regulations to slash billions in previously awarded grant funding

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today secured a decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts barring the Trump Administration’s use of a single subclause buried in federal regulations to terminate billions of dollars in grant funding to the states. The Trump Administration has claimed that five words in this subclause —  “no longer effectuates . . . agency priorities” — provide federal agencies with unfettered authority to withhold funding any time they no longer wish to support the programs for which Congress has appropriated funding. In today’s decision granting summary judgment, the Court finds that the subclause does not allow the Trump Administration to terminate awards based on new “priorities” that differ from those in place at the time the grants were issued. As such, the Court vacates the Trump Administration’s decision to invoke the subclause as grounds for terminating grants based on a subsequent change in agency priorities and permanently bars the Trump Administration from invoking the subclause in that manner in the future.   

“Since taking office, the Trump Administration has used a single subclause buried deep in federal regulations as its sole justification to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to California,” said Attorney General Bonta. “It has done so in clear violation of the law and with uncaring disregard for the real impact these dollars have on our peoples’ daily lives. This funding directly supports public safety, addresses food insecurity, and protects public health. With today’s victory, we’ve closed this much-misused avenue for withholding federal funding to California. Time and again, this Administration has used federal funding as a political bludgeon, and we’ll continue to partner with states across the country to fight to defend against President Trump’s next round of attacks.”

BACKGROUND

With the stroke of a pen, federal agencies ranging from the U.S. Department of Justice to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Labor have deprived California and other states of essential funding they rely on to combat violent crime and protect public safety, equip law enforcement, educate students, safeguard public health, protect clean drinking water, conduct life-saving medical and scientific research, address food insecurity, ensure access to unemployment benefits, and much more. Federal agencies have done all of this without advance notice, without explanation to the state recipients, and in direct contravention of the will of Congress.  

In their lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta and a coalition of 24 states argued that federal agencies’ invocation of the subclause to terminate grant funding runs counter to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) own interpretation of its regulations. When OMB first promulgated the subclause in 2020, it made clear that the language did not authorize federal agencies to arbitrarily terminate grants based on subsequent changes to their priorities. Indeed, the coalition is not aware of a single instance prior to January 2025 in which a federal agency relied on the subclause to terminate a grant on the grounds that agency priorities had changed after the award of the grant. Since January 2025, however, federal agencies across the Trump Administration have asserted that the subclause provides them with a blank check to terminate grants already awarded to states based on newly identified agency priorities — even when those priorities conflict with the priorities identified by Congress or by the agency at the time of the grant award. Today’s decision forecloses the subclause’s future use by the Trump Administration to terminate similar grant funding.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a multistate coalition in supporting the District of Columbia’s motion to dismiss a Trump Administration lawsuit seeking to enjoin D.C. bar disciplinary proceedings against former Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark. In May 2026, the Administration filed a complaint claiming that the bar-disciplinary proceedings violated the Supremacy Clause and Article II of the U.S. Constitution. In the amicus brief, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that attorney discipline dates back to English common law and that no federal attorney should be immunized from ethical standards and rules.

“U.S. DOJ attorneys should not get special treatment or be exempt from the same disciplinary systems all practicing attorneys are subject to,” said Attorney General Bonta. “It’s commonsense and longstanding legal practice. No matter what this Administration might wish, no one is immune from the rule of law.”

In 2021, the Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary submitted a formal complaint to the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel (ODC) about former federal Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark, relating to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The ODC’s role is to investigate and prosecute allegations of misconduct against D.C.-licensed attorneys. In July 2022, based on that referral and ODC’s own investigation, ODC initiated bar-disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Clark.

In May 2026, the Trump Administration filed a complaint against the District of Columbia, the D.C. Court of Appeals, ODC, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, and officials from those institutions. In it, the Administration effectively seeks to implement a proposed rule that would undercut state bar-disciplinary proceedings against federal attorneys by allowing U.S. DOJ to request that such proceedings be suspended until the U.S. DOJ were to first conduct its own review of its own attorneys, including if they violated any ethics rule while engaged in federal duties. Attorney General Bonta and a coalition submitted comments opposing this proposed rule earlier this year. 

In the amicus brief, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that Congress made clear in the McDade-Murtha Amendment, 28 U.S.C. § 530B, that federal attorneys are subject to state regulation where they reside and practice law and that states and the District of Columbia have police powers under the Tenth Amendment to regulate attorneys licensed to practice within their borders. The coalition also explains that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that federal courts must refrain from interfering with ongoing state proceedings under the Younger abstention doctrine. And the coalition highlights that a successful challenge could result in federal attorneys being shielded from disciplinary proceedings, no matter how egregious their conduct. In application, this would provide federal attorneys with blanket immunity from disciplinary proceedings for professional misconduct. 

Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Colorado, Minnesota, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. 

Multistate coalition challenges Trump Administration’s attempt to circumvent court order by recharacterizing grant discontinuations as terminations

OAKLAND — As part of a coalition of 15 attorneys general, California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education's (the Department) latest attempt to terminate federal funding that helps schools recruit and train mental health professionals. Congress established the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program and the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program following the school shootings in Parkland, FL and Uvalde, TX to help address shortages of school-based counselors, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals, particularly in high-need schools. After Attorney General Bonta and a coalition of attorneys general successfully blocked the Department’s earlier effort to discontinue these grants, the Department announced a new plan to end the funding under a different regulation, prompting today's lawsuit. In California, the Department's initial action threatened nearly $200 million in funding statewide. 

“The Trump Administration is once again trying to take critical mental health funding away from the schools that need it most,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Congress made clear that students across the country deserve access to these services. That’s why we’re going back to court.”

In July 2025, Attorney General Bonta and 15 other attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging the Department’s discontinuation of the grants. The Department initially asserted that the grants conflicted with the Trump Administration’s new priorities because they support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A federal district court ruled in favor of the attorneys general, holding that the Department acted arbitrarily, capriciously, and contrary to law, and in December 2025, permanently enjoined the Department from implementing the grant terminations “through any means.” Though the Department appealed, the Ninth Circuit also twice denied the Department's requests to stay the district court’s orders while the appeal proceeded. Despite admitting that most of the grants should have been continued, the Department decided to only award grantees six months of funding instead of providing funding for the full year, as is standard practice, and to make grantees jump through unnecessary hoops to access funds. 

Even after the adverse court rulings, the Department announced a new attempt to terminate the grants under a different regulation. By calling this a termination rather than a discontinuation, the Administration seeks to circumvent the court’s order, which required them to continue these important mental health grants. Although Attorney General Bonta and the coalition continue to fight this attempt to circumvent the court’s order, they have filed this new lawsuit to prevent these planned terminations and cover any gaps that would threaten this funding. 

In today’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the coalition argues that the Department's latest effort exceeds its legal authority, and threatens funding that schools use to provide mental health services for students. The attorneys general have also moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent the grants from being terminated.

In filing today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin.

OAKLAND — As part of a coalition of 21 attorneys general and two governors, California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Fiscal Year 2026 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program. CoC is the federal government’s flagship program for funding affordable housing and other services for individuals at risk of and experiencing homelessness. The coalition alleges that HUD’s 2026 CoC NOFO seeks to steer funding away from permanent supportive housing projects, despite a federal court order issued last week blocking HUD’s 2025 CoC NOFO, which sought to divert more than $3 billion in federal funding from those projects. Congress has also acted to protect renewal funding for those projects.

“The Trump Administration is once again trying to undermine HUD's longstanding Housing First approach that has kept and continues to keep our most vulnerable residents housed,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Congress and the courts have made clear that funding for permanent supportive housing must be protected. We will continue fighting to ensure that those who have secured housing stability do not lose it.”

Permanent supportive housing provides long-term housing stability, transitional housing provides temporary shelter intended as a bridge to permanent housing, and supportive service-only projects provide services without housing assistance. In today’s complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the coalition argues that:

• HUD’s 2026 CoC NOFO illegally attempts to limit funding for permanent housing by setting aside approximately $1.3 billion for transitional housing and supportive service-only projects. The set-aside would effectively cap permanent housing funding below levels necessary to maintain existing projects. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates this could put at least 97,000 residents of CoC-funded permanent housing at risk of losing their housing.
• New scoring criteria in HUD’s 2026 CoC NOFO unlawfully penalizes applicants for continuing to follow HUD’s longstanding Housing First approach by steering funding away from proven low-barrier housing that helps people exit homelessness and toward programs that impose conditions before individuals can access housing.
• These new policies fundamentally undermine CoC’s goal of ensuring that individuals and families who have exited homelessness are not forced back onto the streets, as well as Congress’s directive that HUD prioritize renewal funding to support that same objective. 

In filing today’s complaint, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today co-led a coalition of 24 attorneys general in filing a comment letter opposing a United States Postal Service (USPS) proposed rule that would facilitate the president’s efforts to exert greater control over elections and restrict mail-in voting. The coalition urges USPS to withdraw the proposed rule, which would create a centralized list of voter information and result in eligible voters who are not on that list being denied delivery of their ballots, essentially giving the federal government control over elections conducted by mail.  

“Mail-in voting is safe, secure, and essential to ensuring participation in our democracy. It is used by Americans of every party and background, including the President himself,” said Attorney General Bonta. “The U.S. Constitution assigns responsibility for administering elections primarily to the states, and the proposed rule would unlawfully shift control to the federal government. We urge USPS to withdraw it and protect access to the ballot box.”
 
On March 31, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order attempting to establish a national list of eligible voters and directing USPS, an independent federal agency, to transmit mail ballots only to those on the list. In the order, the President threatened states and elections officials with criminal prosecution and the loss of federal funding if they do not comply with his demands.  

A federal judge struck down that executive order last week in a lawsuit co-led by Attorney General Bonta, with the order applying to 24 states total. On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled in a separate case that the proposed rule violated a settlement between USPS and the NAACP. Nevertheless, USPS has so far not rescinded its proposed rule to implement Trump’s illegal executive order.

In the comment letter, the attorneys general argue that: 

• The proposed rule violates the federal court’s order, which enjoins USPS from finalizing the proposed rule, and amounts to an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government. 
• The Constitution does not allow the President to unilaterally impose changes to federal election procedures, particularly without an act of Congress permitting him to do so. 
• The proposed rule conflicts with USPS’s governing statutes and other federal voting laws. 

The proposed rule would enact these unconstitutional changes before the 2026 election. Implementing these changes would require states to upend their existing election administration procedures for upcoming elections and conduct statewide voter education mere months before the beginning of mail voting for the 2026 general election. Such drastic and rapid changes would undoubtedly create confusion, chaos, and distrust in state election systems, threatening to disenfranchise eligible voters. 

The comment letter was co-led by Attorney General Bonta and the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington. They were joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today celebrated an order from U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacating the Trump Administration’s illegal rule which would have denied Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) eligibility to employees of organizations deemed by the Trump Administration to have a “substantial illegal purpose.” Had it gone into effect, the rule could have empowered the Administration to strip PSLF eligibility from organizations engaged in important, legal activities, such as providing legal services to immigrants, providing gender-affirming care to minors, participating in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, or engaging in civil protest and the right to assembly. The PSLF program is critical in recruiting nurses, first responders, teachers, military personnel, and others working in public service careers, both in government and the nonprofit sectors. The order today found the U.S. Department of Education regulations are contrary to law and promulgated in excess of statutory authority, are arbitrary and capricious, and violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

“A court has thrown out the Trump Administration’s illegal attempt to go back on the federal government’s word and rip away public service loan forgiveness from people doing work the President doesn’t like. Millions of Americans shaped their lives and took on deep financial burdens based on the promise that, if they dedicated their lives to public service and made student loan payments for 10 years, their government would support them,” said Attorney General Bonta. “We challenged the Administration’s illegal action in court last year because our public servants deserve what was promised. Today’s decision is a strong rebuke of the Trump Administration’s continued efforts to weaponize the federal government. We’ll continue to fight to protect public servants and uphold our democratic institutions.”

BACKGROUND

In 2007, a bipartisan Congress under the Bush Administration created PSLF to encourage college graduates to work in the public sector, where salaries are often lower than at for-profit companies. The PSLF program enables public servants who work in eligible government and nonprofit roles to have their qualifying federal student loans forgiven after 10 years of qualifying service and payments. It helps public service employers recruit and retain skilled workers who might otherwise be forced to turn to private sector employment to afford to pay their student loans. Many California state employees are eligible for, actively pursuing, or have already benefited from PSLF as a means of managing the significant student debt that they incurred in preparing for skilled public service careers. 

In November 2025, Attorney General Bonta co-led a coalition of 22 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit challenging U.S. Department of Education regulations that could exclude people with federal student loans from PSLF eligibility based on whether their employers engage in actions that the Trump Administration deems to have a “substantial illegal purpose.” The vagueness of the rule could have empowered the Trump Administration to target politically disfavored conduct and could have threatened PSLF eligibility for organizations that are engaged in longstanding and legal activities. The rule created uncertainty as to who was an eligible employer and would have deterred student borrowers from entering public service. The resulting uncertainty of the rule was expected to undercut the state’s ability to recruit and retain skilled employees.