Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
The U.S. Department of Education launched a civil rights investigation into Maine allowing boys to participate in girls’ sports on Friday, shortly after President Donald Trump slammed Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine, over her defiance of federal civil rights protections for girls.
“You better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any … federal funding,” Trump told Mills at a governors’ summit at the White House on Friday. “By the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal — although I did very well there — your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
Mills said she’d see Trump in court, but Trump replied, “Good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And, enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
Immediately following the exchange, the Department of Education sent a letter to Maine Department of Education Commissioner Pender Makin over “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.”
The investigation includes an inquiry into a Maine school district where a male student who claims to be a female at Greely High School competed against girls and stole first place in the girls’ pole vaulting championship.
The Department of Education told schools across the country to drop their policies allowing men in women’s sports and DEI initiatives because they violate civil rights law, including Title IX. The department threatened to revoke federal education funding from any state or locality that does not comply, as Trump promised to do with Maine specifically on Thursday. Maine’s K-12 schools serve to lose $250 million, according to the Portland Press Herald.
“Maine would have you believe that it has no choice in how it treats women and girls in athletics — that is, that it must follow its state laws and allow male athletes to compete against women and girls,” Craig Trainor, Education Department acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a press release. “Let me be clear: If Maine wants to continue to receive federal funds from the Education Department, it has to follow Title IX. If it wants to forgo federal funds and continue to trample the rights of its young female athletes, that, too, is its choice. OCR will do everything in its power to ensure taxpayers are not funding blatant civil rights violators.”
Investigators will determine whether state and local policies are in “compliance with federal civil rights law.” The department noted, “State laws do not override federal antidiscrimination laws.”
The department has also directed similar investigations into the Minnesota State High School League and California Interscholastic Federation, “both of which publicly announced plans to violate federal antidiscrimination laws related to girls’ and women’s sports,” the department stated.
While some states and sports associations are defiant, others are reversing course in order to comply with federal civil rights law, including in Wisconsin and New Hampshire, as recognized by the department.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.