18
After the exchange at the White House where Maine Governor Janet Mills told President Trump "see you in court" to fight over Maine's policy allowing males to compete in girls' and women's school sports if they claim to have a trans or nonbinary gender identity, Mills released a statement that said:
"If the President attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of Federal funding, my Administration and the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides. The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President's threats."
According to Politico
The Trump administration’s response was swift.
Just hours later [after Mills and Trump exchanged testy words in the White House], the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights launched a self-initiated investigation into the Maine Department of Education for potentially violating Title IX, the federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination. OCR cited “allegations that it continues to allow male athletes to compete in girls’ interscholastic athletics and that it has denied female athletes female-only intimate facilities, thereby violating federal antidiscrimination law.”
“Let me be clear: If Maine wants to continue to receive federal funds from the Education Department, it has to follow Title IX,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in a statement. “If it wants to forgo federal funds and continue to trample the rights of its young female athletes, that, too, is its choice.”
Launching a civil rights investigation is a key step in the process of yanking a school’s federal funding. But the bar for being found guilty of a civil rights violation is high and cutting off federal education funding is a lever of power Washington has not used in decades.
The letter sent to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin notified her that OCR is launching a probe into Maine School Administrative District No. 51 and Greely High School in Cumberland, Maine for allowing a transgender student to compete in girls’ sports categories. The investigation follows a social media post from state Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican, about a transgender student who won a pole-vaulting state championship.
Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have vowed to fight back over any efforts to pull their school’s federal funds.
Here's the Maine Principals' Association's current "Gender Identity Participation Policy" for high school sports. It was adopted in May, 2024.
I'd can't wait to see the arguments that attorneys for Mills, Frey and state of Maine will put forward in federal court to explain
why Maine state officials and educators believe a policy that creates special entitlements for students who say they have a trans or non-binary gender identity, at least for the present time - but does not give the same or similar entitlements to any other students - is Maine's best way of providing fairness, safety, equal opportunity, evenhanded treatment, justice and as optimal an educational environment as possible for all students attending publicly-funded high schools in Maine;
why Maine state officials and educators think a policy which favors and gives special entitlements to Maine high students who say they have a trans or non-binary gender identity, and only to them - and does so in a way that is bound to make girls' high school sports less fair, less safe, less rewarding and less comfortable for female students whilst giving a leg up and an extra heaping of a new kind male privilege to male students who decide to take advantage of the policy - is legal under the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution and Title IX, which prohibits schools in the USA that receive federal funds from depriving anyone of equal opportunity in educational programs due to their sex. This post was edited 4 minutes after it was posted.
As I suggested in a comment on another post, I can’t wait for them to play the discrimination on the basis of gender identity card. ‘Cos if they let boys who identify as trans or non-binary compete in girls’ sport, while keeping other boys out … well, folks, that is straight-up discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
What is completely mind-blowing to me is that I don't think I have ever seen an attorney articulate this perfectly accurate legal argument in any case, not the Korean Spa cases, not the USA Powerlifting case, etc.
IKR?
I’ve said it here and elsewhere 1000 times, that nobody is discriminating against these lunatics because they are trans or non-binary or identify as women. They are discriminating because these lunatics are men. so, duh, not on the basis of gender identity, but on the basis of sex - in contexts where discrimination on the basis of sex has long been established as legal.
But if there is discrimination on the basis of gender identity, then it’s not against these lunatics, it’s against the men who don’t claim a magical gender identity and therefore are not allowed into women’s spaces.
Thank you for acknowledging how pathetic it is that lawyers who are raking in 800, 1200, 2K an hour can’t figure out how to make that argument.
Usually the lawyers arguing on the side of excluding men aren't raking in that kind of money. I look at the Olympus Spa case and they have some junior varsity ADF type Christian legal organization representing them. They are litigating with an agenda of getting special rights for Christians, not protecting women.
'And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics,' the president said.
How much does Maine get in federal government funding?
If they want to fight it in the courts they could adopt the EO in the interim and return to their previous policy if they win. Yet here they are, throwing the 99% of sports participants in the bin for the "tiny few".
These articles says that the federal government provides 10.1% of the money Maine spends on elementary and secondary public school education (which would mean grades K through 12, plus Head Start).
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/05/trump-federal-education-funding-map-schools
Wonderful. So males who cheat are more important than children getting a good education. I suppose that makes sense.
I hope lightning does not strike me for giving credit where credit is due (to Mr. You-Know-Who).
But baby, THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE.
Amen to that!