President Donald Trump’s administration has continued to withhold federal funding from the University of Maine over the state’s transgender athlete policies even though one of its agencies cleared the university of violations on that topic weeks earlier.
Last month, UMaine laid off nine engineers, technicians and scientists after losing millions in federal funding that supported work at its prestigious engineering lab known for work on offshore wind. But it was not clear at the time that the U.S. Department of Energy paused the money over alleged violations of Title IX, the civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education, according to documents obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
The department has kept the funding on hold even after UMaine officials provided it with documentation that it had no transgender athletes and had already been exonerated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shortly after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ sharp February exchange with the Republican president at the White House.
New revelations about the Trump administration’s rationale adds another dimension to the aggressive federal pressure campaign against Maine, which includes a Justice Department lawsuit against the state as well as the restoration of certain funding cuts after court cases and intervention from members of Maine’s congressional delegation.
Nearly $50 million in federal funding to Maine’s university system was held up as of late May, primarily affecting research and programs at the state’s flagship university in Orono. UMaine has sought to keep a low profile as officials have worked behind the scenes to restore dozens of federal awards, some of which were paused or terminated without clear justification.
The university system values its “long-standing partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and will continue to cooperate with their review,” spokesperson Samantha Warren said in a statement.
“We remain unaware of any specific allegations of noncompliance,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. The offices of Mills, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District did not respond to requests for comment. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from the 1st District, demanded the energy department restore the funding in a statement.
“There was no investigation, no legitimate explanation, and no legal justification — just time wasted on useless rigmarole and lives upended,” she said.
The university system became the early target of the administration’s attack on Maine’s federal funding following the governor and the president’s viral face-off, which unleashed multiple federal investigations into Maine for alleged violations of Title IX, including an inquiry into the University of Maine System led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
On March 19, the USDA cleared Maine’s public universities of any violations. It issued a news release that was partially titled “University of Maine System Chooses Sanity.” The system had already been following an NCAA rule that prohibits transgender women from women’s sports.
In a separate case, the USDA froze school nutrition funding to the state, but a federal judge ordered the agency to return the money on April 11. Less than a week later, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department would sue Maine to change its policy that allows transgender girls to compete with other girls at the high school level.
The Trump administration contends that allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports violates Title IX, though legal experts have questioned that interpretation, which the president outlined in a February executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
Around that same time in April, Trump’s energy department also issued a pair of notices to UMaine that it was suspending three research awards that funded projects at the high-profile Advanced Structures and Composites Center, a hub for engineering and offshore wind energy research. About $3.5 million remained across the three awards, which originally totaled more than $15.5 million.
The department cited UMaine’s “failure to comply with one or more” conditions upon which the grant funding was contingent. Another five energy department grants remain active, Warren noted.
The notices initiated a monthslong correspondence in which university officials have sent polite yet urgent queries about how to regain their funding, only to receive slow and vague responses from the energy department, according to copies of the exchange obtained from the university in a public records request.
Chris Boynton, UMaine’s top research administrator, sought an explanation in mid-April for why the grants were suspended so the university could correct any problems. But it took multiple follow-up emails for Boynton to get an answer. On May 1, he received letters saying that UMaine was in violation of Title IX and Trump’s related executive order.
Boynton replied with a detailed response requesting that UMaine’s funding be restored, explaining that UMaine did not have any policies that violated Title IX nor knew of any investigation by the energy department into any such violations. Furthermore, the USDA recently cleared the university system of any Title IX violations, Boynton wrote, attaching a copy of the agriculture department’s March news release.
Only after Boynton sent a follow-up email weeks later did he receive another response: The energy department did not believe that the letter provided sufficient proof of UMaine’s compliance with Title IX and wanted “all documentation” between the university and the USDA during that agency’s review.
Lawyers for UMaine met with energy department officials over Zoom on June 3, said Warren, the university system spokesperson. A week later, a university lawyer provided the department with a written summary of the USDA’s Title IX review that found the system to be in compliance.
As of Friday afternoon, the funding remained paused, Warren said.
Callie Ferguson is the deputy investigations editor for Maine Focus, the BDN’s investigations team. She can be reached at [email protected].
