Maine “took on Trump and won” in a legal battle over trans athletes, Democratic governor Janet Mills has said.
In February, during a meeting of the governors at the White House, President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from the state of Maine after Mills suggested she would not comply with his executive order ordering educational establishments to ban trans athletes from taking part in female sporting events.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” states: “Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
After the legal defeat, Donald Trump’s administration will now unfreeze funding for Maine’s child nutrition programs, with the administration agreeing not to interfere with the state’s access to Department of Agriculture funding. The state will also drop its lawsuit against the agency.
Governor Mills, whose support for trans rights saw her career threatened by Trump, called the settlement a “victory” of the state a “blatantly illegal” threat to block critical funding for school food programs.
She said, as reported by The Independent: “It’s good to feel a victory like this. We took him to court and we won.”
The anti-trans executive orders signed by Trump in February aimed to keep trans women out of women’s sports as well as giving federal agencies latitude in ensuring any state or agency that receives federal funding abides with the Trump administration’s policies surrounding recognising only two sexes: male and female, as assigned at birth.
Maine’s Title IX investigation launched by the Department of Education follows California and Minnesota high school sports governing bodies also being investigated.
The department has also launched an investigation into the University of Pennsylvania and San José State University for similar Title IX violations related to trans athletes, and decided to suspend all programmes and policies that “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex”.
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