Two prominent legislative Republicans have called for Maine schools to lose federal funding due to the state continuing to allow transgender students to compete in high school sports after President Donald Trump told schools to ban such policies.
The executive order Trump signed earlier this month will likely not force Maine to change its laws. The Maine Human Rights Act took effect in 1971, and lawmakers have expanded its anti-discrimination provisions over the years. For example, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. Janet Mills extended it to cover gender identity in 2021.
But in the wake of the Maine Principals’ Association saying this month it will continue to allow transgender female athletes to compete, Assistant House Minority Leader Katrina Smith, R-Palermo, and Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, ramped things up by saying schools should lose federal funds and constituents should report Maine to the U.S. Department of Education.
“I think that’s really the only thing that will ensure that we have biological females competing in sports against other biological females,” Libby told conservative commentator Todd Starnes this week, adding that “money talks.”
Those calls represent a sharp escalation of an already-heated debate that Trump embraced on the campaign trail over the rights of transgender Americans and their participation in sports. They are unlikely to force changes at Maine schools, and Libby’s social media post singling out one student at a Maine high school also put off a state Republican leader.
Smith asked her supporters in a video to go online and report Maine to the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office.
“We need to cry out and get them to put Maine on that list,” Smith said.
Smith also told a reporter Thursday that Maine schools should “rightfully expect to lose their funding,” adding she hopes to “avoid any disruption to our kids and teachers.”
That echoes Trump, whose order bars students assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and from using women’s restrooms while tasking the Department of Education, which he has also pledged to shut down, with investigating potential violators.
Around 3.5 percent of Maine high school students have reported they are transgender, with no clear data available on how many compete in sports. But Maine conservatives have seized on a few instances of transgender students competing in girls’ sports, with Libby making a viral post about a high school pole vaulter this week that was shared by conservative activist and former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines.
At the collegiate level, the NCAA responded to Trump’s order by updating its policies to restrict women’s sports to students assigned female at birth while keeping men’s sports open to all students, regardless of their assigned sex at birth. But courts have blocked bans similar to Trump’s order in states such as Arizona, West Virginia and New Hampshire. Two New Hampshire high school students are also challenging Trump’s order in federal court.
A Maine Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Rep. Kelly Noonan Murphy, D-Scarborough, who co-chairs the Legislature’s education committee, said a loss of federal funding for Maine schools would cause taxes to rise, and she said it would “directly harm students and force local districts to make hard decisions about how schools can continue to best serve their students.”
“We will never support policies that will harm or discriminate against Maine kids,” added Murphy, a former youth sports coach who works in schools as an educational technician and behavioral health care professional.
Not all Republicans have endorsed the recent comments from Libby, who has not seen eye to eye with other Maine Republicans in the past, particularly when she unsuccessfully sought in 2022 the top House GOP role that instead went to Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor.
Maine Republican Party Executive Director Jason Savage pushed back against Libby’s social media post without naming her Thursday during a WGAN interview in which he criticized the Maine Principals’ Association for its transgender-related policies but called for opponents to have “a dose of humanity.”
“Some of the kids that are being put in the middle of these controversies are dealing with a lot,” Savage said. “I think if you’re a young person who is struggling with identity, I don’t think we need to be putting you at the center of anything and making you a focal point for an entire state or nation.”
