Maine is suing the Trump administration after it froze Title IX funds to the state over a ‘transgender’ male pole vaulter who gained a competitive edge by switching to the girls’ team.
(LifeSiteNews) -- Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for freezing Title IX grants over the state’s potential noncompliance with rules against gender-confused males in sex-specific school athletic competitions against actual females, continuing an ongoing battle between the state and the federal government.
In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring school athletic programs to limit female-specific teams to real females in order to continue receiving Title IX funds.
Maine was thrust into the spotlight of the issue when Trump told Gov. Janet Mills at a White House event, “you better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.” His Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights subsequently opened an investigation into Maine’s compliance with the administration’s take on Title IX, citing the case of a “transgender” pole vaulter who gained a competitive advantage by switching to the girls’ team.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) temporarily paused aid to the University of Maine System (UMS) pending a compliance review, then restored the money after receiving assurance to its satisfaction, although the White House later found other entities in the state (the Maine Department of Education, Maine Principals’ Association, and Greely High School) in violation and gave them 10 days to reverse course or lose funding, citing the aforementioned pole vaulter.
Now, the Associated Press reports that Frey filed a suit Monday alleging that USDA’s freeze of education funding for a child nutrition program without a formal investigation constituted “illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed.” $900,000 in previously-approved funds is currently inaccessible to the state, with an additional $3 million expected in July hanging in the balance. USDA has not yet responded to the lawsuit.
Though leftists promote the inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports, critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities, as well as undermining female players’ basic safety and privacy rights by forcing them to share showers and changing areas with members of the opposite sex.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered" by cross-sex hormones; therefore, “the advantage to [confused men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, which found that more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
The U.S. Department of Education currently has a separate investigation into Maine for potential violations of the federal Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA), which “gives parents the right to access their children’s educational data,” via policies allowing schools to withhold information about a child’s gender confusion from his or her parents.
