The State of Maine sued the Agriculture Division on Monday, arguing that the company violated the regulation when it froze funding to Maine final week and that the freeze threatened faculty meal applications.
The go well with, filed in Federal District Courtroom, is the most recent escalation of Maine’s standoff with the Trump administration over transgender athletes, which started when President Trump chastised Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, on the White Home in February. Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to punish the state if it doesn’t comply together with his govt order banning transgender girls from girls’s sports activities.
The federal authorities maintains {that a} Maine regulation prohibiting discrimination towards transgender folks, and the state’s coverage of permitting transgender athletes to play on girls’s groups, are violations of Title IX, the civil rights regulation that prohibits intercourse discrimination in training.
“You can’t overtly violate federal regulation towards discrimination in training and count on federal funding to proceed unabated,” Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, wrote in a letter to Ms. Mills final week, based on the lawsuit. “That is solely the start, although you might be free to finish it at any time by defending girls and women in compliance with federal regulation.”
Aaron Frey, Maine’s legal professional normal, argues within the state’s lawsuit that Title IX doesn’t prohibit transgender athletes from collaborating in girls’s sports activities. In truth, the grievance says, federal courts have held that civil rights legal guidelines require colleges to permit such participation.
The state contends that the Agriculture Division didn’t observe required procedures earlier than freezing the funding. As a result of the funding covers salaries for employees who run the statewide faculty meals program, and the price of their telephones and computer systems, the lawsuit states, halting it threatens this system.
“Beneath the banner of conserving kids protected, the Trump administration is illegally withholding grant funds that go to conserving kids fed,” Mr. Frey stated in a press release, including that “this motion is important to remind the president that Maine won’t be bullied into violating the regulation.”
The state is in search of an emergency courtroom order to revive the funding.
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