U.S. Department of Justice sues Maine over transgender athlete policy

The Trump administration announced Wednesday it is suing Maine over the state’s transgender athlete policy, which the U.S. Attorney General said violates federal anti-discrimination protections.

“The state of Maine is discriminating against women by failing to protect women in women’s sports, pretty basic stuff,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said during a press conference, adding that it is an issue of sports as well as safety. 

The Justice Department is launching a civil suit against the Maine Department of Education for violating Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination in schools on the basis of sex. Title IX does not reference trans people directly, but the Trump administration has interpreted Maine’s policy as discrimination against cisgender girls. 

In a statement in response to the suit, Maine Gov. Janet Mills said it’s the “latest, expected salvo in an unprecedented campaign to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law.” 

“This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states’ rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law,” Mills said.

Bre Danvers-Kidman, executive director of MaineTransNet, also said the lawsuit is an example of executive overreach. 

“What the executive branch is actually doing at this moment is trampling over” the rights of Congress to dictate federal spending and “unilaterally deciding how laws should be interpreted,” which is the job of the judiciary, they told Maine Morning Star.

In a statement Wednesday, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said he looks forward to representing the state.

Ultimately, Frey said, “this matter is about the protections afforded by Title IX and the Maine Human Rights Act,” which includes gender as a protected class.

He said he is confident the state is “acting in accordance with those laws,” a position that he said is bolstered by the “complete lack of any legal citation supporting the Administration’s position in its own complaint.”

On Friday, the Maine Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights saying it would not comply with the department’s proposed resolution agreement, which would require the state to end its transgender protections. The state also doubled down on its assertion that the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX does not have legal standing.

In a letter to Bradley Burke, regional director for the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster pointed to legal precedent that has required schools to allow trans athletes to participate on teams aligning with their gender identity.

“Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” she wrote. “Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds.”

Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby appeared at the Wednesday morning press conference alongside Bondi and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. The Auburn Republican has been at the center of this controversy. After sharing photos and identifying information about a transgender student athlete on her legislative Facebook page, she was censured by her peers and stripped of the right to vote or speak on the Maine House floor until she apologizes. 

That post went viral and prompted the Trump administration’s scrutiny of Maine’s policy.

Bondi read off two examples of trans girls placing in girls athletic competitions, skiing and track, and recounted the initial exchange between President Donald Trump and Mills during which the Democratic governor said she’d see Trump “in court.”

Bondi also noted that two federal departments, the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, deemed Maine in violation of Title IX after brief investigations into the matter.

“We have exhausted every other remedy,” Bondi said of the suit. “We tried to get Maine to comply. We don’t like standing up here and filing lawsuits, we want to get states to comply with us.”

Bondi pointed to the many ways the federal government has punished Maine. “We’ve stripped grants from Maine through other departments and we are going to continue to fight for women,” she said.

Mills also spoke to what she described as the “politically motivated investigations that opened and closed without discussion” and referenced Friday’s federal court order requiring the U.S. Department of Agriculture to unfreeze payments related to Maine’s school meal programs, which the governor said “reinforces our position that the federal government has been acting unlawfully.”

“Let today serve as warning to all states: Maine might be among the first to draw the ire of the federal government in this way, but we will not be the last,” Mills said.

Some Republican legislators have pushed for Maine to concede to the Trump administration’s demands, with several proposing legislation that would ban trans athletes — LD 233 and LD 868 — as well as another bill that would remove gender identity from the Maine Human Rights Act. Those bills have not yet been scheduled for a public hearing.

Asked about the choice before legislators right now, Danvers-Kidman said, “Scapegoating trans people is not going to protect Maine’s federal funding.”

“If you compromise that right, it is a slippery slope,” they said. “Once you start eroding civil rights protections, they are all up for grabs.”

Correction: This story was updated with the proper last name and pronouns for Bre Danvers-Kidman.