Maine gets ‘final warning’ after defying ban on transgender in girls’ sports

The Trump administration has issued a “final warning” to Maine officials over their failure to bar male-born athletes from competing in girls’ sports, saying the matter will be referred to the Justice Department unless the state takes action.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights gave the Maine Department of Education until April 11 to sign its proposed voluntary resolution agreement to resolve its violations of Title IX or face a federal probe putting the state at risk of losing its federal funding.

In his Monday letter of impasse, OCR Regional Director Bradley Burke said that the state education department has offered no response to the Letter of Finding of Noncompliance issued March 19, which gave the state a 10-day deadline to reach an agreement.

Craig Trainor, the office’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said Monday that the “Maine Department of Education’s indifference to its past, current, and future female athletes is astonishing.”

“By refusing to comply with Title IX, MDOE allows — indeed, encourages — male competitors to threaten the safety of female athletes, wrongfully obtain girls’ hard-earned accolades, and deny females equal opportunity in educational activities to which they are guaranteed under Title IX,” Mr. Trainor said in a statement.

The stalemate comes with Maine Gov. Janet Mills taking issue with President Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” saying she will follow the U.S. Constitution.

“It doesn’t allow him to make laws out of whole cloth by tweet or Instagram post or press release or executive order,” the Democratic governor told reporters at a March 24 event in Bangor, according to Spectrum News. “That’s just fundamental law, and I stand for the rule of law and the separation of powers.”

The Trump administration announced in February that it would enforce Title IX, the 1972 federal law banning sex discrimination in education, on the basis of biological sex, erasing a Biden administration rule that added “gender identity” to the law.

Maine’s problems with the Trump administration extend beyond the Education Department.

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services referred Maine to the Justice Department over the state’s “noncompliance with Title IX.”

The issue of biological males in girls’ sports isn’t hypothetical in Maine, which has been rocked this year by a transgender-athlete uproar.

A male-born student at Greely High School won the pole-vaulting title last month at the girls’ state track-and-field championship, a year after placing fifth in the boys’ pole vault.

Maine School Administrative District #51, which includes Greely HS, said in a March 26 statement that it was unwilling to enter into the voluntary resolution agreement with HHS, citing the Maine Human Rights Act.

That state law bans discrimination based on gender identity.

Maine is also facing a Department of Education investigation into accusations that schools hid information about students’ gender transitions from parents in violation of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act.