English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Chinese (Simplified)
Hindi
Japanese
Rep. Elise Stefanik is calling for a federal probe of an upstate school district for its “direct violation” of President Trump’s executive order banning trans athletes from competing in girls sports.
The Saratoga Springs City Board of Education, which is in the New York GOP congresswoman’s district, passed an “Affirming Our Support for Every Student” resolution March 27 declaring that transgender students have the “right to use facilities and partake in activities and sports consistent with their gender identity.”
The move prompted Stefanik to furiously fire off a letter Monday to US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon urging her to investigate the district.
Stefanik said the board’s move violates Trump’s executive order 4201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” as well as Title IX of federal education law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools and programs that receive federal funding.
The school district could lose some of its $3 million in federal funding if the US Education Department concludes it’s violating federal law and Trump’s order.
“Allowing biological males into girls’ sports and locker rooms is in direct violation of Title IX and President Trump’s executive order,” Stefanik said in her letter to McMahon, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.
“Our daughters should not be forced to compete against biological men in competitive sports or share a locker room with biological men,” the congresswoman said.
She called the Saratoga board of education’s transgender policy a “blatant violation” of federal law and Trump’s order and requested that McMahon have the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights open a formal investigation to hold it accountable and to “protect our young women and girls in sports.
“I join President Trump in his commitment to protect our nation’s girls and daughters,” Stefanik wrote. “This Far Left woke ideology has no place in our communities.”
Stefanik, who is mulling a run for governor, has also targeted the nation’s elite universities — such as Columbia and Harvard — for failing to crack down on antisemitism and hate speech during campus protests.
She co-signed a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber on Thursday demanding a massive trove of documents to determine whether the Ivy League school obeyed federal law while receiving US funding.
Stefanik is herself a Harvard graduate.
Stefanik has clashed with her alma mater in the past.
In December 2023, during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing, Stefanik grilled the heads of Harvard, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania over their policies to combat antisemitism on campus.
Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned a few weeks later amid a plagiarism scandal.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars schools from discriminating if they receive funding from the federal government.
Stefanik and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky) noted Harvard’s April 14 rejection of demands that included: establishing more merit-based hiring; ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs; reforming “programs with egregious records of antisemitism and other bias,” and stepping up admissions screening of international applicants to “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values,” including those “supportive of terrorism or antisemitism.”
The Trump administration announced a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants to the Ivy League school and $60 million in multi-year contracts, and the president has also publicly mused about stripping Harvard of its tax-exempt status.
