President Trump warned the governor of Maine there would be a price to pay if she failed to comply with his executive order banning men from competing in women’s sports.
“We are the federal law,” the president told Gov. Janet Mills during a public feud that erupted this morning at the National Governors Association meeting. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t. Your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. You better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.”
The governor failed to heed the president’s warning and this afternoon the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced they have launched an official investigation.
“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 governor said. “The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”
There are allegations that the state 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 anti-discrimination law.
“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,” said Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “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.”
State laws do not override federal anti-discrimination laws, and the MDOE and its schools remain subject to Title IX and its implementing regulations.
In addition to MDOE, the Department earlier this month announced directed investigations into the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), both of which publicly announced plans to violate federal antidiscrimination laws related to girls’ and women’s sports.
Trump’s order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” invoked Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded institutions, to prevent transgender-identifying men from competing with female athletes. The directive also instructs executive departments and agencies to withhold funding from any public school that prioritizes gender identity over biological sex with its sports policies.
Maine is one of a handful of states that said they would defy the order.
“I heard men are still playing in Maine,” the president said Thursday night.
“I hate to tell you this, but we’re not going to give them any federal money. They are still saying, ‘We want men to play in women’s sports,’ and I can not believe that they’re doing that,” he said. “So we’re not going to give them any federal funding, none whatsoever, until they clean that up.”