The state of Maine’s early positioning as a state that would not comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports put it on the Trump administration’s radar in a big way.
As Legal Insurrection reported at the time, Trump point-blank called out Maine’s Democrat Governor, Janet Mills, during his greeting to the National Governors Association working session at the White House in February in what ended up being a tense exchange where Mills told Trump “see you in court” and Trump said he was looking forward to it.
Not long after that, the Maine-Trump administration war escalated when the Dept. of Agriculture announced it was launching a “compliance review” of the University of Maine to determine if they’d committed any Title IX violations. Brooke Rollins, the USDA Secretary, noted that her department was involved because the university was a “federally funded land-grant institution” that “receives over $100 million in USDA funding.”
Though there was a brief pause in funding for the University of Maine System in mid-March, that part of the standoff seemed to sort itself out once Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) got involved. Shortly after, the USDA indicated that the University of Maine System “has clearly communicated its compliance with Title IX’s requirement to protect equal opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports.”
But the situation with Maine’s government remained at a standstill.
Around the time the USDA was doing its compliance review of the University of Maine, the Dept. of Education initiated its own investigation into the Maine Dept. of Education as well as the Maine School Administrative District over allegations they were not in compliance with Title IX.
A month later, the ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) shared that they had found “policies and practices that are in violation of Title IX.” As a result, they “issued a proposed Resolution Agreement to the MDOE to resolve the Title IX violations.” A second warning notice by the OCR to Maine issued 12 days later gave them until April 11th to sign on to the agreement or else risk the investigation being referred to the DOJ.
On Friday afternoon, the Maine Attorney General’s office wrote back and acknowledged that the two sides were still at an impasse. In it, they disagreed with the ED’s assessment, saying their policies and procedures don’t violate Title IX even though they do allow “transgender girls and women” (men) to participate in women’s sports:
“Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulation prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” Maine Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster wrote to the regional director of the U.S. DOE’s Office of Civil Rights.
As a result, the ED has followed through with its warning and has referred the case to the DOJ. They have also launched “an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding”:
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department. Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom—be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Collins weighed in on Friday’s developments as well, saying she agreed with the federal government’s position on Title IX but vowing she would continue to fight for Maine’s federal funding:
The conflict between how the State of Maine and the Administration interpret Title IX needs to be resolved. I agree with the federal government’s position that biological males should not compete in girls and women’s athletics. Policies to the contrary violate the original intent behind Title IX.People who are transgender deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. But that does not change the fact that Title IX mandated equal access to athletic resources and facilities on the basis of sex – not on the basis of gender identity. Safe and fair athletic competition has been one of the keys to the success of Title IX.While I will continue to advocate strongly for federal funding for Maine, I disagree with the state’s position and instead support the original intent behind Title IX.
Additionally, on Friday a judge ruled for Maine that the USDA must reverse course on their April 2nd decision to pause funding for what they described in their notification letter as “certain administrative and technological functions in schools.”
Here’s the key part of what U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. wrote in a 70-page ruling:
The ruling reads that the USDA “must immediately unfreeze and release to the state of Maine any federal funding that they have frozen or failed or refused to pay because of the state of Maine’s alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX.”
The administration is also “barred from freezing, terminating, or otherwise interfering with the state of Maine’s future federal funding for alleged violations of Title IX without complying with the legally required procedure.”
We’ll keep you updated on developments. As always, stay tuned.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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