Trump’s DOJ Sues Maine Over Trans Kids | EUROtoday

The Department of Justice introduced on Wednesday that it’s suing Maine over its insurance policies and legal guidelines that enable trans youngsters to compete on sports activities groups that match their gender identification.

“The Department of Justice will not sit by when women are discriminated against in sports. This is about sports. This is also about these young women’s personal safety,” Attorney General Pam Bondi stated on the press convention asserting the civil lawsuit. “I met many of these women throughout the past weeks and months, and what they have been through is horrific.”

Bondi was joined onstage by Riley Gaines, who has develop into an outspoken advocate for barring trans ladies from ladies’s sports activities since she tied for fifth place with a trans swimmer at a 2022 collegiate swim meet.

The DOJ is in search of an injunction to bar Maine from permitting trans athletes to compete on sports activities groups that match their gender identification. Officials allege Maine is violating Title IX, the 1972 civil rights legislation that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any faculty applications which are receiving federal funds.

“The State of Maine, through its Department of Education, is openly and defiantly flouting federal anti-discrimination law by enforcing policies that require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions designated exclusively for girls,” the lawsuit reads.

“We all know this is not about fairness in sports,” Gia Drew, the manager director of EqualityMaine, an LGBTQ+ rights group, advised HuffPost. “It’s a political power grab and, unfortunately, our trans kids are caught in the middle.”

It’s unclear precisely what number of trans youngsters are taking part in sports activities in Maine, however native media has recognized two of them.

Maine has been within the Trump administration’s crosshairs because the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, acquired right into a spat with the president at an occasion in February. When Trump requested Mills if she would bar transgender athletes from taking part in sports activities, the governor stated she would adjust to federal and state legislation. Maine legislation contains gender identification as a protected class and prohibits discrimination based mostly on that trait.

“We are the federal law,” Trump responded. “You better do it because you’re not going to get federal funding.”

“See you in court,” Mills answered.

The subsequent day, the Education Department introduced it was investigating Maine, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture quickly froze funding for varsity lunches. A federal decide ordered USDA to unfreeze the funds final week.

Trump supercharged the suitable’s tradition warfare when he returned to workplace in January, together with signing a collection of government orders that focus on trans individuals. His orders have declared that there are solely two sexes, have sought to ban gender-affirming take care of trans youth, and have stated trans women and girls can’t take part in women sports activities.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has additionally been on a campaign to ban trans youngsters from taking part in sports activities. The company has despatched letters to a number of states, warning they’re prone to shedding their federal funding in the event that they don’t adjust to Trump’s ban.

Maine, nevertheless, refused to bend the knee.

“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,” Craig Trainor, the performing assistant secretary for civil rights on the U.S. Education Department, stated in a press release final week. “Governor 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.”

Cutting off federal sources to a complete state seems to be unprecedented. The final time a single faculty district misplaced federal funding was 1990, in response to Education Week — and that was after a chronic investigation.

Losing such funding can be a significant blow for the state of Maine. The state’s Education Department has spent, on common, $250 million in federal funds every year prior to now decade, in response to The Maine Monitor.

“It puts a lot of pressure on our state,” Drew stated. “We are poorer, and we depend on those federal dollars to support our schools.”

“Today is the latest, expected salvo in an unprecedented campaign to pressure the State of Maine to ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law,” Mills stated in a prolonged assertion on Wednesday. “Let today serve as a warning to all states: Maine might be among the first to draw the ire of the Federal government in this way, but we will not be the last.”

The Education Department additionally has open investigations in Minnesota, California, Washington and Oregon over trans youngsters taking part in sports activities.

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on elected officials to capitulate, thinking they can get the [federal funding] back,” Drew stated. “But once you start negotiating with terrorists, they want more. Once you hand over the trans community, they’re just going to say, ‘Who’s next?’”