A judge ordered that the Maine Principals’ Association supply the rosters of school athletic teams — but not a list of transgender athletes statewide — to the federal government Tuesday as part of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the state over trans athletes.
The Justice Department sued Maine almost a year ago for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports, accusing the state of violating Title IX, a federal law protecting women from discrimination in education and other federally funded activities.
As part of the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor, the Justice Department subpoenaed the principals association to request information about students — including their names, schools and rosters detailing their athletic histories.
The association, which governs interscholastic sports in Maine, objected to the request, arguing that the rosters include personal information unrelated to the case and would be burdensome to compile. Portland Public Schools, which sought to intervene in the case last fall, also argued that the request should be denied because the rosters contain confidential student records.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Frink Wolf ruled Tuesday that the government may have access to 2023-24 and 2024-25 rosters, including athletes’ names, schools and grades.
“While I am unsure exactly what the Government hopes to glean from the rosters, I accept that the rosters are broadly relevant and find that the MPA’s and PPS’s concerns are overstated,” Wolf wrote in her ruling, noting many athletic rosters are available publicly on the association’s website.
The federal government also will be allowed to access “complaints, concerns, praise or reports” that the MPA has received from school districts regarding transgender athletes’ participation in sports or use of gendered facilities, Wolf ruled, so long as personal information is redacted.
But Wolf ruled against the federal government over other records, including its request for lists of all known transgender athletes in Maine and results of events they participated in, which the MPA says it does not track.
The only records of transgender athletes that the MPA has are requests by some athletes to participate in sports aligning with their gender prior to a policy change in 2022 that allowed those athletes to participate without a request, Wolf wrote.
The MPA had argued that those records contain sensitive personal and health care information, and Wolf ruled that the burden of producing those records outweighed any potential benefit.
“While I accept that these individual records might have some relevance to the Government’s claims, I find that the MPA and PPS have shown that the burden of producing such sensitive records outweighs any likely benefit,” Wolf wrote.
“There is good reason to be cautious in requiring the disclosure of the names of individual transgender athletes and their personal details where, as other courts have recognized, this ‘Administration has been explicit about its disapproval of the transgender community,’” the judge added.
Wolf also ruled that meeting minutes and transcripts of the MPA’s Gender Identity Equity Committee do not need to be released, as they “presumably discuss the same sensitive information” that would be contained in individual records about transgender athletes.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Drew Johnson can be reached at [email protected].
