The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Maine in an effort to challenge the State’s policy with respect to the transgender athletes competing in girls and women’s sports, the attorney general Pam Bondi announced Wednesday.
The demand alleges that Maine’s policy violates title IX and comes from a broader effort of the Trump administration to highlight a problem that they consider politically harmful to the Democrats.
“The State of Maine, through its education department, is mocking the federal law against discrimination when enforcing policies that require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions designated exclusively for girls,” said the lawsuit. “By prioritizing gender identity over biological reality, Maine’s policies deprive athletes of fair competition, deny the same athletic opportunities and expose them to the greatest risks of physical injuries and psychological damage.”
Bondi announced the lawsuit together with the Anti-Trans activist Riley Gaines and other parents and students of Maine who have opposed the State’s policies regarding transgender athletes.
“The Department of Justice will not sit when women are discriminated against in sports. These are sports. It is also the personal security of these young women,” Bondi said in comments in the Department of Justice. “I met many of these women during the last weeks and months, and what has happened is horrible.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi attends a press conference, while presenting actions against the state of Maine, which is locked in a dispute with the Trump administration on transgender policy, in the Washington Department of Justice, on April 16, 2025.
Leah Millis/Reuters
The demand is probably the first in a series of legal challenges presented by the Trump administration, after Bondi sent warning letters previously in February to state officials in Maine, California and Minnesota, ordering them to “comply with federal laws against discrimination that require them to keep men out of women’s sports.”
The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, has eliminated the efforts of the Trump administration to strip the federal funds of Maine as executive overreach and minimized the issue of transgender athletes who participate in sporting events of girls and women.
“Because there are two, maybe two, Trans athletes compete in Maine’s schools at this time, decided to close the funds for the school nutrition program, the school lunch program, completely,” Mills said in an interview earlier this week. “The law says that if you don’t like what a state is doing here, you can’t simply remove funds here.”
