Politics
Illinois Joins Lawsuit Seeking to Halt Trump Administration From Freezing Billions in Child Care Funding
The Health and Human Services seal is seen before the news conference of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Hubert Humphrey Building Auditorium in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana, File)
Leaders from Illinois and a handful of other Democrat-led states have jointly filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze some $10 billion in federal child care funding.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Thursday announced the state had joined on to a lawsuit filed along with New York, California, Minnesota and Colorado that seeks to halt what they claim is the administration’s unconstitutional freeze of funding that allows families to access food, safe housing and child care.
“Congress enacted this critical funding to support families and help working parents access child care, and the president does not have the authority to withhold it in this way,” Raoul said in a statement. “This move comes with zero justification, and in the administration’s own words, targets only Democrat-led states. This unlawful action will hurt families and harm state economies.”
The Trump administration announced last week that state officials will be required to provide additional information to receive the federal child care money. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would freeze the funding for child care subsidies until states provided even more exhaustive documentation.
The department said it also would withhold other federal safety net money for those states — California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York — including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which supports low-income parents with children under 18 with direct payments and by providing them with child care.
Raoul’s office said Illinois has received notice that funding from the Child Care and Development Fund and the Social Services Block Grant programs would also be frozen unless the state turns over “the entire universe” of documents related to the use of these funds in order to halt the freeze.
Raoul asserts this is an “impossible task on an impossible timeline.”
The administration’s action threatens about $1 billion in federal funding for Illinois, according to Raoul’s office. That money is used to provide low-income families with access to child care, as well as access to after-school and summer programming.
In Illinois alone there are more than 150,000 children who receive child care supported by these funds, according to Raoul.
According to the lawsuit, the Trump administration has no “justification for this action beyond a desire to punish Plaintiff States for their political leadership.”
“The action is thus clearly unlawful many times over,” the states say in their complaint.
The Trump administration has said the freeze is necessary in order to root out “potential” fraud, though the lawsuit claims the real motive is to punish Democrat-led states who have been critical of President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit also said Congress laws limit the ways a president can sanction those accused of federal funding fraud and do not permit the “shoot first ask questions later” approach the administration has allegedly carried out.
“At a time when families are struggling with basic costs of living,” Raoul said, “the Trump administration’s arbitrary move to withhold this funding is particularly callous.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
