Attorney General Ellison secures preliminary injunction preserving access to key social services
September 11, 2025 (SAINT PAUL) — Attorney General Keith Ellison announced today that he secured a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to gut essential health, education, and social service programs for low-income families. In July, Attorney General Ellison joined 20 other attorneys general in challenging the federal government’s reinterpretation of a decades-old law governing access to social services. A federal court granted the coalition’s request for a preliminary injunction, blocking sweeping new rules that threatened to strip funding from programs like Head Start, Title X family planning clinics, food banks, domestic violence shelters, adult education, and community health centers.
"Cutting off essential social services to people who cannot prove their immigration status is cruel and would have caused immense harm to folks across Minnesota, including kids from low-income families,” said Attorney General Ellison. “It is morally wrong to turn a child away from a food bank because of their family’s immigration status, and I’m pleased to have stopped the Trump Administration from doing exactly that. I don’t believe in the politics of division and cruelty, and most Minnesotans don’t either. We’re a state that believes in helping one another and treating others with respect, and that’s exactly what I will continue fighting for as your attorney general.”
Earlier this summer, four federal agencies – the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (ED), Labor (DOL), and Justice (DOJ) – issued a coordinated set of directives abruptly redefining longstanding policy under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). For nearly 30 years, Republican and Democratic administrations alike interpreted PRWORA to allow states to offer vital public health, education, and anti-poverty programs regardless of immigration status. The Trump administration’s sudden reversal would have forced states to impose immigration status verification on countless services, threatening catastrophic funding losses and program closures.
The court’s decision halts implementation of those new directives in the plaintiff states while litigation proceeds, ensuring that millions of families can continue to access critical services without fear of denial or disruption. With this ruling, the judge is acknowledging that the administration likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution by issuing sweeping new mandates without lawful rulemaking, grossly misreading PRWORA, and failing to consider the devastating impacts on states and communities.
In Minnesota, the changes to social services were expected to affect a variety of programs. One of the most prominent is Head Start, an early education program for low-income families that provides comprehensive services ranging from school readiness to parental engagement to nutrition and more. Another of the programs expected to be targeted funds the operation of shelters for homeless individuals, provides services for residents of those shelters, rapidly re-houses families to prevent them from becoming homeless, and more. Delivery time for some of these services, like emergency shelter during life-threatening weather conditions, can make the difference between life and death. Delaying these services to verify immigration status could have a devastating impact on recipients. Furthermore, given the transient nature of homelessness, many of the individuals served by this particular program do not have documentation of any kind.
Joining Attorney General Ellison in this lawsuit are the attorneys general of New York, Washington, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
