Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a civil lawsuit against the state of Maine Wednesday over officials’ refusal to comply with the Trump administration’s policies barring transgender female competitors from girls’ and women’s sports.
The Justice Department is accusing Maine of flouting Title IX, which bars sex-based discrimination in education programs that garner federal funding
“It’s not only an issue in sports, it is a public safety issue,” Bondi told reporters. “These boys are allowed to go in the women’s restroom. They are allowed to go in the women’s dressing room and get fully naked and change … in front of these young women.”
“We are also considering whether to retroactively pull all the funding they have received for not complying in the past,” the AG added.
President Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 5 directing the Education Department to “take all appropriate action to affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms” and make clear “that women’s sports are reserved for women” and settle outstanding lawsuits in a manner “consistent with this policy.”
Days later, a transgender competitor from Cumberland’s Greely High School — competing under the name “Katie” — won the Class B girls’ state championship in pole vaulting.
That same week, Trump clashed with Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills during a White House event, chiding that she “better comply” with the order.
A defiant Mills shot back, “See you in court.”
The Trump administration had warned Maine, California and Minnesota earlier this year that it would not “not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law.”
The Education Department later opened a civil rights probe into Maine and Trump demanded a “full-throated” apology from Mills after UMS, a network of eight public universities in the state, agreed to comply with the order.
“The state of Maine is discriminating against women by failing to protect women and women’s sports,” Bondi said Wednesday. “Pretty basic stuff. This is a violation of Title IX. The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports.”
“We have exhausted every other remedy,” the AG explained. “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.”
“Today is the latest, expected salvo in an unprecedented campaign to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law,” Mills responded in a statement.
“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.”
Bondi was joined by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and former college swimmer-turned-conservative activist Riley Gaines.
“The Trump administration could not be any clearer to all state sports leagues and educational institutions,” McMahon stressed. “We take the violations of women’s civil rights very seriously. I have three granddaughters, and I want to make sure that they are treated fairly.”
Last month, the Department of Education wrapped up its probe of Mine and referred its findings to the DOJ.
The DOJ had also cut $1.5 million in federal grants for Maine’s Department of Corrections and the Department of Agriculture announced that it was also pulling funds in protest of the state’s handling of the transgender issue.
State officials have sued the Trump administration over the funding freezes.
“Let this be a notice [to] California, Minnesota [and] the likes thereof — if you do not comply with federal law, you do not get to reap the benefits of complying with federal law. Of course, one of those benefits being receiving federal funds,” Gaines warned.
State Rep. Laurel Libby, who has opposed Maine’s policies on transgender athletes in women’s sports, slammed her state for refusing to budge.
“Maine Democrats have doubled down on their far-left agenda and now our students and families stand poised to lose hundreds of millions in federal funding,” she said in a statement.
“Their radical gender ideology is endangering the continued existence of women’s sports and penalizing Maine students, against the will of Maine citizens.”
