Maine will continue to defend trans student athletes despite Supreme Court ruling

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tuesday upholding transgender athlete bans in other states, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said the state will continue to defend its inclusive policies.

The high court upheld bans in Idaho and West Virginia on trans girls playing on girls’ sports teams, aligning with the Trump administration’s interpretations of federal anti-discrimination laws that claim allowing such participation is unsafe and unfair. 

“The question before the Court is: Under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the majority opinion. “In other words, may schools maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females? The answer is yes.”

Maine is not one of the 27 states that have passed similar bans. The state has protected trans athletes’ rights to play in school sports and access bathrooms and locker rooms for more than a decade through a provision in the Maine Human Rights Act. . Frey said Tuesday the ruling does not stop Maine from defending its law.

“Today’s ruling, while predictable, is yet another disturbing affront to personal liberties by providing states with a license to discriminate,” Frey said. “The Court was clear that this decision had no bearing with respect to a state’s choice to include transgender athletes and as such, will not implicate the Department of Justice’s case against Maine.”

US Supreme Court upholds transgender athlete bans in Idaho, West Virginia

The federal government has sued Maine over its policy allowing trans athletes to play on teams and access school facilities aligning with their gender identity. Several federal agencies investigated the state for alleged violations of Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law, after Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, defended the state’s policies in a tense exchange with President Donald Trump during a National Governors Association event at the White House last year.

Those investigations did not follow any patterns of typical civil rights probes: they included no interviews, data requests or negotiations but notified the Maine Attorney General’s office via emailed letter that the state had violated Title IX. And despite threats to cut education funding, no federal funds were withheld from Maine as a result of the investigations.

Legal experts have previously said that per legal precedent Title IX does not explicitly protect or restrict trans students’ rights in schools. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruling said the 27 states that have banned trans athletes from participating in sports aligning with their gender identity are allowed to do so under Title IX and the U.S. Constitution.

Several legislative attempts to overturn state-level transgender protections in the Maine Human Rights Act have failed. There is also an ongoing legal battle surrounding a citizen initiative seeking to ban trans students from sports teams and facilities aligning with their gender identity. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced in May that the campaign did not collect enough valid petition signatures to be the question on the November ballot — a decision that was backed by the Maine Superior Court. An appeal of that decision will be heard in Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday.