The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against Maine earlier today over the state’s refusal to comply with Donald Trump’s ban on transgender students participating in school sports, the latest volley in the administration’s war on the state.

Attacks on transgender rights – and especially those of trans athletes – were central to Trump’s 2024 campaign, but Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), as well as several state agencies, have stood strong in their defense of trans rights in the face of the administration’s attacks.

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At issue is Title IX, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Democrats – including both Mills and the Biden administration – interpret that to mean that trans students should be allowed to participate in school sports as their gender, that banning them from school sports because of their sex assigned at birth is denying them an equal education for a reason prohibited by Title IX.

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The Trump administration, as well as many Republicans, argue that trans girls are actually boys and do not face discrimination on the basis of sex if they’re banned from participating in sports with others of their gender. To advance this claim, Trump spent a good part of his campaign lying about trans people, saying that they have impossibly long arms, are taller than the vast majority of the population, and possess super strength, and, therefore, it would be unfair for them to compete against cis women.

In February, Trump signed an executive order called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” that told federal agencies to work to get school districts and states to ban trans athletes from school sports.

While the Trump administration is trying to force its interpretation of Title IX on states and local governments, Maine drew Trump’s ire more than other states. During a February 21 meeting with Democratic and Republican governors at the White House, Trump singled out Gov. Mills, asking whether she planned to comply with his anti-trans executive order. Mills said that her state was “complying with the state and federal laws.” When Trump continued to petulantly insist that Mills comply with his order, the governor told the president, “We’ll see you in court.”

Since that interaction, two federal departments have cut unrelated grants to Maine – for low-income kids’ food and for prisons – in order to pressure the state to cave on the issue. Maine sued the Department of Agriculture for withholding the grants for kids’ food.

“When he said, ‘I am the law, basically we are the law,’ my jaw dropped,” Mills said about Trump. “Every fifth-grade student knows that there are three branches of government.”

On Friday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated federal law by freezing food funding.

Now, the DOJ is suing the state.

“We believe they are failing to protect women, and it’s not only an issue in sports. It is a public safety issue,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement announcing the suit. She said that the Trump administration is considering a move to “retroactively pull all the funding that they have received for not complying in the past.”

Mills has refused settlement in the case, saying that federal law is on Maine’s side.

“This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states’ rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law,” she said in a statement.

The DOJ lawsuit follows a Department of Education (DOE) investigation into the state.

“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,” Maine Assistant Attorney General Srah Forster wrote in a letter to the DOE last week explaining that the state would not institute a trans sports ban. “Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds.”

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