A group of Down East residents is fighting its school district’s anti-transgender resolution that passed just months after a candidate backed by a statewide right-wing political action committee won a school board seat in Franklin.
As part of its efforts, the group has used the state’s Freedom of Access Act to obtain hundreds of pages of documents from the district that shed light on how Maine First and other conservative groups have sought to shape the district’s policies on transgender students.
Carla Jung, who was elected in March 2025 to represent the Hancock County town of roughly 1,500 residents, has spearheaded RSU 24’s anti-transgender policy. Maine First, a conservative PAC and brainchild of former state Rep. Larry Lockman, contributed to Jung’s campaign by distributing mailers urging Franklin residents to elect the “MAGA mom,” according to a Maine First newsletter signed by Lockman.
The 24 Allies, an advocacy group made up of concerned citizens from “far and wide,” according to two of the group’s local members, submitted a sweeping Freedom of Access Act request to the district. They received more than 900 pages of documents and communications between the school board members, superintendent Michael Eastman and at least two separate conservative groups, including Maine First and the Maine Policy Institute, formerly known as the Maine Heritage Policy Center.
Among those communications, which 24 Allies shared with the Bangor Daily News, is a cache of emails, newsletters and text messages indicating the extent to which the conservative groups have influenced RSU 24’s elected board, specifically around policies related to Title IX, the federal statute barring sex discrimination.
“In the enforcement gap caused by this extreme deference to local control they have for Maine school boards, there’s a shadow Department of Education forming,” Russ Linton, a member of the advocacy group and Sullivan resident, told the Bangor Daily News. “It’s not just about the Title IX policy. They have a whole slate of policies that they are pushing and a lot of this is stuff they couldn’t find support for at the state level so they’re trying to backdoor this stuff — and use public resources to make it happen, such as lawyers and legal insurance and staff time.”
The board’s policy aligned with President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order, which barred transgender athletes from playing in women’s sports. Gov. Janet Mills’ administration rejected the order and has continued defending trans athletes’ rights through a provision in the Maine Human Rights Act.
Neither Jung nor Lockman responded to separate inquiries Wednesday from the BDN.
The debate over transgender issues has been a near-constant in the school district’s governance since 2023, when the board restricted access to two LGBTQ books at its middle and high school in Sullivan.
The district’s anti-trans policy, which took effect July 1, is now being contested in court after the Maine Human Rights Commission filed a lawsuit last November claiming the Down East school system, and four other Maine districts, violated state law by banning transgender students from playing sports and using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
RSU 24 serves nine communities between eastern Hancock County and western Washington County, including Mariaville, Waltham, Eastbrook, Franklin, Sullivan, Sorrento, Winter Harbor, Gouldsboro and Steuben.
“Our mission and vision is to keep all kids safe,” 24 Allies member Tammy Taylor told the BDN. “The fact that they are targeting the most vulnerable community across our state needs to stop because they’re going up against a wall of people that may be hidden right now, in their peaceful places and little farms, but they’re going to come out and they’re going to start rallying.”
Maine First’s mailer supporting Jung, sent out a week before the school board’s 2025 election, heralded her as an advocate for “keeping boys off the girls’ sports teams and out of the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms,” according to the FOAA documents.
Following Jung’s election and MHRC’s lawsuit, the school board got new legal counsel after their longtime Drummond Woodsum lawyers advised the school district to follow state law. Instead, the board hired Jack Baldacci Jr., the son of former Democratic Gov. John Baldacci and current legal counsel for Maine First, according to the documents. Baldacci is representing the five school districts sued by MHRC.
The resident advocacy group contends Baldacci and Maine First were integral in Jung’s push for the anti-transgender policy, including that the trial lawyer was involved in drafting the board’s anti-transgender policy.
“Thanks to the generosity of our donors, Maine First Project’s legal counsel, John Baldacci Jr., has provided us with a legal opinion and a model parliamentary motion for school board members to introduce and debate,” a Maine First newsletter from July 2025 says. “Passage of the amendment will align the school district with President Trump’s Executive Order signed on February 5 of this year, titled ‘Keeping men out of women’s sports.’”
Baldacci and Jung participated in an “activist training” event hosted by Maine First in Brewer in May 2025, according to the group’s monthly newsletter signed by Lockman. The training took place just two months after the school board member’s election but before Baldacci was hired as RSU 24’s legal counsel.
Baldacci also did not respond Wednesday afternoon to a request for comment from the BDN.
“This whole thing is a wedge issue to rile up a bunch of parents, get fear mongering going, and then try to push all these other policies through on that same wave,” Linton said. “The first victim is never the last: this does lead to a focus on trying to say women need protection at all times, women are weak.”
Taylor and Linton believe the influence from the conservative groups could bring about oppressive regulations that will have far-wider implications for all district students, they said, adding that transgender students and cisgender girls could be subjected to “genital checks” and other excessive measures.
Lockman made incendiary remarks about gay men and women, abortion, rape and the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. He has since said he regretted those comments.
RSU 24’s legal budget surged from $17,000 last year to $30,000 this year following the MHRC lawsuit, according to an email sent by the board’s former chair.
The documents also suggest that the Maine Policy Institute, through its education initiative, has also been involved in the board’s drive to follow Trump’s order.
The education initiative’s director, Heidi Sampson, was in consistent communication with board members, including Jung and Mary Cowperthwaite, the district’s Gouldsboro representative, according to the documents.
Sampson provided the pair with sample Title IX-related policies in an email dated Oct. 8, 2025 — the day after they voted to pass the resolution barring transgender students from sports and spaces that align with their gender identity. The vote was 4-4 but the resolution passed because the board uses a weighted vote system, which gives greater weight to representatives from towns with larger populations. One member was absent from the October meeting.
Jung communicated with Sampson on how to enforce the policy, which she proposed could be done so through checking birth certificates, according to the documents.
Sampson is a former republican state representative who, during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and her sister, Dr. Dora Ann Mills, to German doctors who experimented on Jews during the Holocaust.
“The lawsuit will need to run its course,” Sampson told the BDN on Wednesday.
In May 2025, two months after Jung’s election, the nine-person board rescinded a student-led 2019 policy that specifically allowed transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice.
Earlier this month, the board declined to re-evaluate the weighted system after a petition signed by roughly 420 residents requested it be reconsidered. As it stands, Jung and Cowperthwaite account for 43% of the board’s vote, according to the Ellsworth American.
Taylor and Linton urged for more residents to stand up against the board’s recent actions, arguing that the right-wing policies won’t end with transgender students.
“Harvey Milk said we could never lose hope,” Taylor said, referring to the late human rights leader who was the first openly gay elected official in the United States.
“Even if he is dead, we literally are standing on the backs of the people who have fought and died for this cause, for these people and this community,” Taylor added. “I will stand on the backs of those who fought and died, and someone else will stand on my back in the future. It’s never going to end — we will always be here — so they just need to get the […] over it.”