The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday that it is suing Minnesota and the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) for allowing transgender girls and women to play on school sports teams matching their gender identity. The case, filed in the Minnesota District Court, is just the Trump administration’s latest attempt to impose a nationwide ban on trans student-athletes (without congressional approval) by harassing and blackmailing states into dropping their trans-inclusive policies.

The DOJ claims that schools with trans-inclusive sports policies violate Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education. President Joe Biden’s administration said the law forbids anti-trans discrimination, since it’s impossible to discriminate against someone’s gender identity without also taking their sex at birth into account. However, the current administration says trans-inclusive sports policies are discriminatory because they violate the privacy, dignity, and possible awards of cisgender girls and women in sports.

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The MSHSL board voted in December 2014 to allow trans students to participate in athletics and fine arts based on their gender identity. The policy took place at the start of the 2015-2016 school year. The first Trump administration allowed this, and similar policies in other states, to continue without any opposition during his first presidential term.

“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the DOJ’s announcement of its lawsuit, according to The Hill. “This Department of Justice is proud to partner with HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] and the Department of Education to protect our girls in Minnesota and across the country.”

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The DOJ says federal funding could be withheld from the state if it is found to have violated Title IX or if it refuses to abide by the Trump administration’s executive orders banning trans girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Minnesota’s Department of Education receives $2.98 billion from the U.S. Department of Education (ED), and $42.6 million from the Department Health and Human Services (HHS), according to the DOJ.

In its 45-page filing, the DOJ said it wants Minnesota schools to repeal all trans-inclusive sports policies, “maintain sex-separated intimate spaces” in sports facilities, to file compliance reports for the next five years showing the state’s adoption of the administration’s transphobic policies, and to establish a system to “compensate female athletes who have been denied equal athletic opportunities,” Politico reported.

In response, Keith Ellison, the attorney general for Minnesota, said, “Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight. It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address.”

Last year, Ellison filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for pledging to pull federal funding over the state’s trans-inclusive policies. The case is still being processed through the judicial system. 

“This new suit is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months,” Ellison added. “I will continue to stand up to the Trump administration and do everything in my power to stop them from bullying vulnerable children in Minnesota.”

In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to block federal funding for schools that allow trans girls and women to participate in school sports as their authentic selves, and the order told the DOJ to prosecute schools that allow trans students to play sports.

Last September, the ED’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that its investigation found that Minnesota had violated Title IX. Last December, Minnesota’s state educational agency and high school sports authority rejected the Trump administration’s proposed resolution agreement and negotiations over the matter.

The administration has sued Maine in a separate legal action to get the state to stop letting trans students participate in school sports. It has also sued California for the same reasons.

Currently, 29 U.S. states have laws or policies banning trans girls and women from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity.

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