The Trump administration is suing Maine over its refusal to sign an agreement to block transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the U.S. Department of Justice is taking the Maine Department of Education to court over alleged violations of Title IX for allowing the participation of male athletes in female-only high school and college sports. Bondi accused the state and its education officials of “discriminating” against women.
“The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports,” Bondi said in live televised remarks Wednesday. “This is also about sports but it’s also about these young womens’ personal safety. I have met with many of these women over the past few months and what they have been through is horrific.”
Bondi said that the DOJ is also asking a federal judge to order the return of sports titles to the young women “who rightfully won these sports,” adding that prosecutors are also considering whether to “retroactively pull all the funding that they have received for not complying in the past.”
In the lawsuit, the DOJ alleges that Maine’s policy of allowing males who identify as females to participate in women’s sports has resulted in young female athletes being “displaced from podiums, lose opportunities for advancement to regional and national competitions, and miss out on critical visibility for college scholarships and recognition.”
“The undeniable physiological differences between males and females provide boys with inherent advantages in strength, speed, and physicality that pre-determine the outcome of athletic contests,” the DOJ wrote.
Maine has become a flashpoint in the national debate over transgender athletes in girls and female sports since Trump vowed to withhold federal funding from any states that fail to comply with his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order. Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, has refused to comply with Trump’s directive.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it was referring its Title IX investigation of the Maine Department of Education to the DOJ for further enforcement action after a deadline to sign an agreement pledging to stop allowing transgender athletes to compete on women’s teams.
The federal agency said it will also begin administrative proceedings to pull back the state’s federal K through 12 education funding, including formula funds and discretionary grants. The DOJ clawed back more than $1.5 million in federal grants from the state’s Department of Corrections over a transgender woman’s placement in a women’s correctional facility.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey responded to the Trump administration’s demands with a one-page letter saying the state has reached an “impasse” with federal officials and won’t sign the proposed agreement.
Bondi said on Wednesday that the DOJ and other federal agencies have “exhausted every other remedy” to get Maine to comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of federal anti-discrimination rules.
“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,” she said. “We have repeatedly notified Maine of its infractions and urged them to remedy the situation to protect women.”
