US education department to cut funding on Maine for gender-affirming school sports
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced Friday its plan to terminate the Maine Department of Education’s (MDOE) federal K-12 education funding for its noncompliance with US President Trump’s executive orders attacking “gender ideology” and gender-affirming educational practices.
The DOE concluded that MDOE has endorsed or allowed school policies allowing males to compete in female sports and occupy women-only intimate spaces. It additionally stated:
[O]ver at least the past two years and continuing in the current school year, at least three male student-athletes have competed in Maine high school girls’ athletic programs for at least five different high schools (so affecting many more times that number of high schools whose female athletes competed against the male athletes).
The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights launched its Title IX investigation of the MDOE on February 21, 2025, in response to Maine Governor Janet Mills challenging Trump to get the courts to make Maine comply with his executive orders. The DOE published its noncompliance finding on March 19 along with a proposed resolution agreement, notifying Maine that it will send a letter of impending enforcement action if Maine does not sign the resolution agreement within ten days from the finding.
In addition to ceasing the practice of its gender-affirming policy, the resolution agreement would have required the MDOE to make “each school district in Maine to submit to MDOE an annual certification of compliance [and] promptly notify OCR of any credible report that a school district is still allowing a boy to participate in girls’ sports.” It would have also required the MDOE to give recognitions to female athletes who did not receive them due to males participating in women’s sports.
On March 31, the DOE sent the MDOE a final warning letter instructing that it will take enforcement action if Maine does not accept the agreement by Friday.
The DOE’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor commented in a press release:
The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity … 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.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funds. President Trump issued Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 to enforce Title IX, notably by requiring girls’ or women’s school athletic opportunities and private spaces (e.g., locker rooms) to be reserved only for biological females. They further ordered federal funding to be cut from educational institutions that did not comply with the orders.
On the contrary, the MDOE supported its stance by stating that the Maine Human Rights Act adheres to Title IX by prohibiting discrimination in education on the basis of a protected class, including the class of “sexual orientation (which includes gender identity and expression)…”
The DOE also announced that it will be referring this investigation to the US Department of Justice for suit in federal court. These developments come after the Trump administration’s announcement to create a Title IX Special Investigations Team to combat “gender ideology” in schools.
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International and Comparative SOGIESC Law - Professor Andreas R Ziegler 