The Department of Education said on Friday that it was moving to cut off all federal funding for Maine’s public schools because the state had ignored President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports teams.
The agency also said it had asked the Justice Department to pursue “enforcement action” against Maine, which the Trump administration has been targeting since the president picked a fight with the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, over transgender athletes in February.
The administration had set Friday as the deadline for Maine to comply; last month, after a brief investigation, it declared that the state’s education system was violating Title IX, the federal law that prevents sex discrimination.
Ms. Mills has maintained that the state’s human rights law — which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity as well as religion, race and other protected characteristics — can be changed only by the Legislature, not by executive order. She has not expressed her own views on transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports publicly, though she has said it was an issue “worthy of a debate.”
The Education Department said in a statement that it would “initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination” of the state’s K-12 funding, which totaled $249 million in the 2024 fiscal year.
“The department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in the statement.
In a letter to the Education Department on Friday, Sarah A. Forster, an assistant state attorney general, said that Maine would not agree to change its law and conceded that the two sides had reached an impasse.
“Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” she wrote. “Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds. To the contrary, various federal courts have held that Title IX and/or the Equal Protection Clause require schools to allow such participation.”
The Maine Principals’ Association, which supervises interscholastic athletics, has said that among the 151 public and private high schools it oversees statewide, there are two transgender girls currently competing on girls’ teams.
Since February, the Trump administration has hammered the state with overlapping investigations of its education system. Last week, the Agriculture Department froze funding that Maine said could threaten its school meals programs. In response, the state sued the department.
Not long after the Education Department’s announcement on Friday, a federal judge in Maine issued a preliminary ruling in the state’s favor, ordering that the U.S.D.A. funding be restored and issuing a warning to the Trump administration. “The Federal Defendants are barred from freezing, terminating, or otherwise interfering with the State’s future federal funding for alleged violations of Title IX without complying with the legally required procedure,” the ruling said.
It was not immediately clear on Friday where the administrative proceeding on the state’s education funding would be held, or when — or whether it would meet the specifications of the court’s order. The Department of Justice is expected to sue the state to try to compel its compliance.
The announcement highlighted some fundamental legal questions underlying many of Mr. Trump’s recent moves on K-12 education, including: Will the courts uphold the administration’s broad interpretation of civil rights law? And how much latitude does the executive branch have to stop the flow of federal funds that have been allocated by Congress?
Next week, a Federal District Court in New Hampshire is scheduled to hold a hearing on whether the administration can follow through on its threat to cut off Title I funds to schools with certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Democratic-run states, teachers’ unions and progressive interest groups, like the A.C.L.U., have said it cannot, filing several federal lawsuits in response. Some education experts have predicted that the question could reach the Supreme Court.
