The Department of Justice is seeking a federal court injunction requiring Pine Tree State schools to immediately stop transgender boys from competing in girls’ sports and return all athletic records and titles to their rightful female owners.
The federal agency will also consider retroactively pulling funding from school districts that have not complied with Title IX regulations in the past, Attorney General Pam Bondi said during an April 16 news conference in Washington.
“Pretty basic stuff,” she said. “This is about women’s sports. This is also about young women’s personal safety.”
Bondi was flanked by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Maine Assemblywoman Laurel Libby, who was censured by her state’s Democrat-led state legislature for posting photos and the identity of a male transgender athlete from Greely High School who won an indoor track state pole vaulting title this year.
Maine high school athletes who competed against transgender males also appeared on stage, along with Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer who brought this debate to the national stage after losing the championship to a transgender male who had competed in the men’s division until his senior year.
Bondi said a Maine transgender male also won a cross-country state title last fall in the girls’ division and placed at state-level skiing competitions this past winter.
“That took away a spot from young women in women’s sports,” Bondi said. “Shame on him.”
Bondi did not disclose where this federal lawsuit was filed.
In a separate court case related to the same debate, a judge ordered the federal government to unfreeze Department of Agriculture funding to schools.
President Donald Trump previously issued executive orders clarifying Title IX and prohibiting males from competing in women’s sports. The NCAA has already complied, and Republican House members are working on a bill to codify that regulation.
Maine’s attorney general has already informed Bondi that his state has no intention of complying with the order. School district superintendents told their communities that until directed otherwise, they are expected to comply with state laws that are contrary to Trump’s executive order.
Trump publicly sparred with Maine Gov. Janet Mills at a governor’s workshop on Capitol Hill in February, warning her that he would pull funding if she continued to defy his executive order.
At the state level, the Greely High School community has shown public support for all transgender athletes, including their state champion pole vaulter, criticizing Trump and the NCAA for its compliance. But Libby has also received plenty of support via her social media presence and continues to state that most Mainers do not support men competing as women in their state.
“Maine Democrats have doubled down on their far-left agenda, and now our students and families stand poised to lose hundreds of millions in federal funding,” Libby said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times.
“Their radical gender ideology is endangering the continued existence of women’s sports and penalizing Maine students against the will of Maine citizens.”
Mills issued a statement after Bondi’s news conference, saying that Trump and the Department of Justice’s actions are politically motivated.
“As I have said previously, this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot,” the governor said.
