The Department of Education on Friday referred a Title IX investigation into Maine schools to the Justice Department after the state failed to reach a resolution with the Trump administration over a finding that it violated federal anti-discrimination law by allowing transgender students to participate in girls’ sports.
“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,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant Education secretary for civil rights.
The Education Department in its announcement said it will also initiate administrative proceedings to determine whether to terminate federal K-12 education funding for Maine’s state education department, including formula and discretionary grants.
“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,” Trainor said. “Governor [Janet] 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.”
Both the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which recently began investigating schools and states that allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports, said in March that Maine had violated Title IX, the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination that the Trump White House says prohibits trans athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s teams.
The HHS investigation covered the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals’ Association, which governs high school sports in the state, and Greely High School, a school of about 700 students in the Portland suburbs. The Education Department’s findings applied only to the state education department.
Both agencies gave Maine officials until the end of March to comply with the administration’s orders to ban transgender students from girls’ sports. On the last day of the month, the Education Department issued what it called a “final warning” to Maine’s state department of education, saying it would turn the investigation over to the Justice Department if the two entities did not come to an agreement by April 11.
A spokesperson for the state education department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The move by the U.S. Department of Education is the latest development in an ongoing battle between the Trump administration and Maine over the state’s refusal to implement President Trump’s executive order to ban trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
Trump threatened earlier this year to withhold federal funding from Maine if the state did not comply with his order, prompting a brief but highly publicized argument with Democratic Gov. Janet Mills at a White House event in February, during which the governor told Trump she would see him “in court.”
State officials, including Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey (D), have argued Trump’s executive order conflicts with the Maine Human Rights Act, which explicitly protects the right of transgender students to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity.
Frey's office declined to comment on Friday. Mills’s office did not immediately returned a request for comment on Friday’s referral to the Justice Department.
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a letter to Mills that it does not matter if state law allows “or even requires” transgender girls to participate against and alongside non-transgender girls in school sports.
“Where federal and state law conflict, states and state entities are required to follow federal law,” Bondi wrote, referring to Title IX. She promised swift legal action against states that refuse to comply with Trump’s order.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice and Education announced the formation of a special Title IX investigations team, which the departments said would more effectively protect students “from the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”
That the Education Department referred its investigation to the Department of Justice is of little surprise: earlier on Friday, Maine’s Assistant Attorney General Sarah A. Forster wrote in a letter to the department’s Office of Civil Rights that Maine’s state education department would not sign its proposed resolution.
“We agree that we are at an impasse,” she wrote.
The two departments are not the only ones to have targeted Maine over the state’s refusal to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports.
Frey sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week after the agency froze some of its federal funding, arguing the pause is “blatantly unlawful” and hampers the state’s ability to feed schoolchildren who rely on nutrition assistance programs.
Earlier this week, Bondi said the Justice Department had pulled all “nonessential” funding from Maine’s state corrections department after federal officials learned a transgender woman was serving time for murder in one of the state’s two women’s facilities.
Maine’s Department of Corrections said the cuts, totaling around $1.5 million, would impact state-run initiatives related to substance abuse treatment and support for children with incarcerated parents.
This story was updated at 4:31 p.m.