The Trump administration on Monday gave Maine officials 10 days to resolve alleged Title IX violations by signing an agreement that would require the state to change its policy around transgender high school athletes and return nearly $187,000 in federal funds.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights made the offer after determining that the Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees high schools sports in the state, and Greely High School in Cumberland had violated the landmark federal civil rights law by allowing a transgender girl to compete on the Greely girl’s track team, according to a copy of the notice and the agreement obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
The federal agency reached a similar conclusion against the Maine Department of Education last month, after a Republican lawmaker caught President Donald Trump’s attention by singling the track athlete out on Facebook.
The proposal escalates a standoff between the Trump administration and Maine over the state’s policy allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports.
The federal government has claimed the state is violating Title IX by failing to comply with Trump’s executive order barring transgender girls from girls’ athletics, a rationale that legal experts have called dubious. State officials have refused to comply with the order because it would violate the Maine Human Rights Act. In the meantime, six federal agencies have investigated or targeted Maine since last month in an effort to force the state into submission. There are only two transgender girls competing in Maine high schools sports, according to the Maine Principals’ Association, and none at the state’s public universities.
Danna Hayes, a spokesperson for the Maine attorney general’s office, said the state was reviewing the proposed agreement from the health and human services department and declined to comment any further. The violation letter said that the matter had been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, meaning the federal government might sue Maine if state officials don’t accept the government’s proposed terms within the next 10 days.
Those terms, outlined in an eight-page proposal agreement sent to the state on Monday, “confirms a finding by OCR that MDOE, MPA, and Greely are in noncompliance with Title IX.” The federal government started the clock after meeting with representatives from those entities last week, on March 12, and state education officials “would not sign or provide a counteroffer” to the government’s proposal, according to the agreement.
The Maine Principals’ Association would be required to reverse its policy allowing transgender girls to compete in post-secondary girls sports and Greely would only field teams in compliance with that new policy, the proposal states. If the Maine Principals’ Association refuses to change the policy, the state’s education department will ban public schools from playing in events organized by the Maine Principals’ Association and “prohibit MPA from using public school facilities to host MPA-organized or affiliated events.”
Maine would also have to give back federal funding it previously received “based upon the above background and findings,” the agreement states, citing $99,940 that the state’s education department received from the Centers for Disease Control and another $87,000 it got from the Administration for Children and Families. The document did not describe how Maine used those funds.
The department of education, the Maine Principals’ Association and Greely staff would be required to undergo training on “relevant nondiscrimination requirements under applicable federal laws” and “obligations to ensure equal opportunity to female athletes under Title IX” as well as other provisions stipulated in the agreement. The proposal would also subject the state to a four-year period of federal compliance monitoring.
An official from Maine School Administrative District 51, which includes Greely High School, did not immediately respond to questions on Monday.
Jared Bornstein, a spokesperson for the Maine Principals’ Association, also did not immediately respond to questions on Monday.
However, he has previously said that the organization’s policies were in keeping with state law, and criticized the scrutiny that this ordeal has brought upon the students at the center of it.
“That scrutiny of the kids is categorically unwarranted. These young women are participating in athletic events in accordance with our policy, which is informed by state law,” Bornstein said last week.
