The U.S. Department of Education is reportedly investigating a Maine school district over a complaint about a transgender member of one school’s co-ed cheerleading team.

This week, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had initiated investigations into more than a dozen K-12 school districts in mostly blue states across the country. The investigations stem from complaints OCR has received alleging the districts are violating the presidential administration’s anti-trans interpretation of Title IX by allowing transgender girls to participate in girls’ athletics.

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“The complaints assert that these entities … maintain policies or practices that discriminate on the basis of sex by permitting students to participate in sports based on their ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex,” a January 14 press release reads.

According to the Portland Press Herald, a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said that the complaint against Regional School Unit 19, one of two Maine school districts under investigation, alleges that the district “allowed a male student to use female facilities and join the girls’ cheerleading squad.”

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But RSU 19 superintendent Michael Hammer told the paper that the cheerleading squad in question is a co-ed team.

“Boys can join, girls can join. No one lost a place on the team because a transgender student joined,” Hammer said. (Hammer did not address allegations that the district “allowed a male student to use female facilities.”)

Hammer told the Press Herald that a letter the district received from the Education Department notifying him of the federal civil rights investigation was the first time he’d ever heard of anyone having a problem with an alleged trans student’s participation on the school’s cheerleading squad.

Hammer said the letter alleged that a trans girl joined a district middle school’s cheerleading team in February, but it neglected to acknowledge that the team is co-ed. In the letter, the Education Department said that its investigation would “examine whether the district has a policy or practice of allowing male students to participate in athletic programs designated for female students and whether the district has a policy or practice of allowing male students to use intimate facilities designated for use by female students in violation of Title IX.”

Upon returning to office last January, the president signed an executive order rescinding the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX as protecting students against discrimination based on gender identity. The following month, OCR notified U.S. schools that it would not enforce the Biden administration’s trans-inclusive interpretation of the law.

As the Press Herald notes, only six school districts in Maine have complied with the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, deferring instead to the Maine Human Rights Act, which protects trans athletes’ right to compete on sports teams and in athletics divisions that align with their gender identity.

In November, the Maine Human Rights Commission sued five school districts whose anti-trans athletics policies, it alleges, violate state law.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) has publicly clashed with the president this year over the rights of trans student-athletes. In her state. When the president threatened to withhold federal education funding in retaliation for Mills’ refusal to comply with the administration’s anti-trans agenda in February, the state successfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the release of the $3 million in congressionally appropriated funding.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has sued Maine, challenging the state’s trans-inclusive interpretation of Title IX. The case is scheduled for trial in April.

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