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(CN) — The Trump administration on Wednesday sued the state of Maine for refusing to comply with a federal ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
“Today the Department of Justice is announcing a civil lawsuit against the Maine Department of Education,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at a press conference Wednesday announcing the suit. “The State of Maine is discriminating against women by failing to protect women in women’s sports.”
Bondi and the Justice Department claim that Maine is violating Title IX with its continued defiance of President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order called “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports,” which mandates that the United States “rescind all funds” from school systems that allow transgender women to compete in women’s athletics.
“The undeniable physiological differences between males and females provide boys with inherent advantages in strength, speed, and physicality that pre-determine the outcome of athletic contests,” the Justice Department wrote in its 31-page lawsuit, filed in federal court in Maine.
The government claims that those supposed differences result in the discrimination of biological girls who compete in sports in Maine’s school system.
“This discrimination is not only unfair but also demeaning, signaling to girls that their opportunities and achievements are secondary to accommodating others,” the Justice Department said. “It erodes the integrity of girls’ sports, diminishes their competitive experience and undermines the very purpose of Title IX: to provide equal access to educational benefits, including athletics.”
According to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the lawsuit comes after a Department of Education investigation concluded that Maine was in violation of Title IX. Those findings were then passed off to the Justice Department, McMahon said Wednesday.
The Justice Department is seeking a court order to bar Maine from allowing transgender women from competing in women’s sports. It’s also seeking to correct past athletic records of biological females who competed against transgender athletes.
Officials in Maine have sparred with the federal government on this issue since the earliest days of Trump’s second term. Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, made waves in February when she told Trump, “We’ll see you in court,” in response to the president asking if she was going to comply with his executive order.
That tense on-camera interaction was referenced in Wednesday’s lawsuit.
“Despite repeated warnings from the United States Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Justice, Maine’s leadership has doubled down, publicly declaring defiance with statements like ‘We’ll see you in court,’” the government claimed.
Maine has faced sweeping cuts to federal funding as a result of its defiance of the Trump administration’s stance against transgender rights. Earlier this month, the federal government pulled more than $1.5 million in federal grants from the state’s corrections department after a transgender woman was placed in a women’s jail, according to the Justice Department.
The Department of Agriculture froze more than $374,000 in state operating expenses as retaliation for allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports. That freeze has been paused by a federal judge, however.
Wednesday’s lawsuit is the latest escalation in the battle between Maine and the Trump administration over this contentious issue. Bondi said that filing the complaint was a last resort.
“We have exhausted every other remedy,” she said Wednesday. “We tried to get Maine to comply. We don’t like standing up here and filing lawsuits. We want to get states to comply with us.”
And it might not stop at Maine, Bondi added. She said that Minnesota and California are also on the Justice Department’s radar for their refusal to ban transgender women from girls’ sports.
“Let’s see what they do,” Bondi said. “Let’s hope they comply.”
Alongside Bondi and McMahon onstage at Wednesday’s news conference was Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who tied a transgender athlete for fifth place in the women’s 200-meter freestyle final at the 2022 NCAA swimming championships. Gaines has been an outspoken critic of transgender rights ever since.
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