Maine escalated its legal battle with the Trump administration on Friday when the state refused to sign an agreement to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
The Department of Education (DOE) referred Maine to the Department of Justice in response.
Newsweek reached out to Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills’ office for comment via email.
The Context
President Donald Trump has butted heads with Mills since he took office over his executive order banning transgender athletes from participating in female sports.
Tensions came to a head in February when Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state unless it complied with his executive order.
Mills responded: “See you in court.”
Andree Kehn/Sun Journal via AP
What To Know
The DOE’s Office of Civil Rights first asked Maine to sign the Title IX agreement to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports in a March 31 letter.
“We will not sign the Resolution Agreement, and we do not have revisions to counter purpose,” the Maine attorney general’s office said in its Friday response. “We agree that we are at an impasse.”
The letter went on to say that “[n]othing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds. To the contrary, various federal courts have held that Title IX and/or the Equal Protection Clause require schools to allow such participation.”
The DOE subsequently referred Maine to the DOJ for further investigation. A DOE official also said Maine must “defend its discriminatory practices” before an administrative law judge.
Transgender rights—particularly transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ and women’s sports—have long been a lightning rod for conservative criticism and were a central part of Trump’s successful 2024 campaign.
The president, congressional Republicans and conservative activists have repeatedly argued that transgender women taking part in women’s sports pose a danger to cisgender athletes, but there’s little evidence supporting that claim.
The University of California, Los Angeles’ School of Law said in a February brief that transgender sports bans “have negative impacts on the health and well-being of affected transgender students and athletes, particularly youth and young adults.”
What People Are Saying
Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, said in a statement: “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.”
He added: “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.”
Update 4/11/25, 4:36 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
