Maine wants a federal judge to toss out the Trump administration’s lawsuit accusing the state of violating Title IX.
In his 18-page response, filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey denied the claims that the U.S. Justice Department leveled against the state.
Additionally, Frey asserted that the Trump administration’s threatened action against Maine violates the spending, due process and equal protection clauses and the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. He also argued that the Trump administration is violating the separation of powers and exceeding its legal authority.
That comes more than three weeks after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the lawsuit against Maine, alleging that the state has discriminated against girls and women and has failed to protect them in sports. The complaint alleges that competing with or alongside transgender athletes exposes girls and women to “heightened risks” of physical and psychological harm. The lawsuit cited no instances of Maine girls suffering physical harm while competing with or alongside transgender athletes.
In the 31-page civil rights lawsuit, the Trump administration points to three examples of transgender athletes competing in girls sporting events or on girls teams. Together, those three athletes placed in the top three in seven events over three years. In two instances, their performances were key in their schools’ placements in track-and-field and skiing competitions, the administration claims.
“This discrimination is not only unfair but also demeaning, signaling to girls that their opportunities and achievements are secondary to accommodating others,” the Trump administration wrote in the lawsuit, calling the state’s policies “unapologetic sex discrimination.”
For the 2023-2024 school year, about 45,000 students participated in high school sports in Maine, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. (That does count students who participated in two or more sports multiple times.)
The lawsuit fulfilled Bondi’s pledge to take the state to court over noncompliance with President Donald Trump’s February executive order barring transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
It could ultimately land before the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, where the Trump administration could ask it to define Title IX, the landmark 1972 law barring sex-based discrimination in schools, to outlaw athletic policies like the ones in Maine and more than 20 other states.
Not long after Trump signed that February executive order, he singled out Maine during a Republican governors meeting in Washington. The next day Trump and Gov. Janet Mills crossed paths at an event at the White House. In a heated exchange, Trump pressed Mills on the state’s policy toward transgender athletes and the governor told the president that she would “see you in court.”
State law, specifically the Maine Human Rights Act, prohibits discrimination in education, employment, housing and more on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, ancestry or national origin.
Since that verbal sparring at the White House, the Trump administration has launched an unprecedented pressure campaign against Maine over the inclusion of transgender athletes. Key to that has been a slate of investigations from six federal agencies targeting the state, the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals’ Association, Greely High School in Cumberland and the University of Maine System.
The U.S. Department of Education, whose Title IX probe is behind the lawsuit, has launched a separate probe into its state counterpart over allegations that dozens of school districts are hiding students’ “gender plans” from parents in violation of the Family Educational Privacy Rights Act.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also has referred a Title IX case to the Justice Department.
Almost immediately the Trump administration pulled funding for Maine Sea Grant. More than 30 states, Puerto Rico and Guam participate in the national Sea Grant program. No other Sea Grant program has seen its funding cut.
That funding was restored last week after the Commerce Department renegotiated the award, though it’s unclear what — if any — changes were made.
In March, the Social Security Administration ended two programs allowing Maine providers to share birth and death information electronically, a move that meant new parents would have to travel to one of eight Social Security offices to register their newborns for a Social Security number.
The agency reversed that decision within 48 hours.
The acting Social Security administrator, Leland Dudek, took that move in retribution against Mills over her war of words with Trump, despite earlier statements calling it a “mistake.” He even brushed off a senior aide’s warning that it would increase fraud. In an email, Dudek acknowledged “improper payments” would increase, but it was necessary in order to punish a “petulant child.”
And on April 1, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins informed Mills that her department was pulling funding for programs that feed schoolchildren, children in day care, at-risk youth outside school hours and adults in care settings. In a letter to the governor, Rollins warned that “this was just the beginning” for Maine because of alleged Title IX violations.
Last week, the Trump administration signed a settlement with Maine agreeing to “refrain from freezing, terminating, or otherwise interfering with the state of Maine’s access to United States Department of Agriculture funds” over “alleged violations of Title IX.” In exchange, Maine dropped its lawsuit challenging the freeze.
Later that month, Bondi announced that her department was pulling $1.5 million in “nonessential” funding from the Maine prison system because of a transgender inmate housed in a women’s prison.
In the Thursday filing, Frey asked the judge to rule in Maine’s favor and award the state legal expenses and any other relief the court deems necessary.