Parents demanded that a trans child be banned from sports. The town rejected their request.

A town in Maine voted Monday night to continue to comply with the state’s Human Rights Act, allowing a transgender grade-schooler to play on a girls’ recreational basketball team.

The 3–2 vote at the November 10 special meeting of the St. George, Maine, Select Board came after a group of parents submitted a letter at last week’s regular monthly meeting raising their “deep concern” about the St. George Parks & Recreation Department’s youth basketball program allowing a transgender girl to play on its third and fourth grade girls’ team.

“While we understand that Maine law allows children to participate [in sports] based on how they identify, we also believe that these policies have created a very uncomfortable situation for many families in our community,” local parent Emily Chadwick read from the group’s letter during the public comment portion of the November 4 meeting.

In video from the meeting, Chadwick and others who spoke initially seemed to go out of their way not to mention the trans child or indeed to even specify the reason for their “concerns” or to ask the board to take any specific action beyond considering “how these policies impact all the children involved, not just one.”

Noting that the group seemed to be referencing the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), which bars discrimination based on gender identity, Select Board Chair Jane Conrad told those in attendance that their proper course of action would be “to lobby your legislators” to change the law. The Select Board members, she explained, “are in charge of enforcing the law.”

The board ultimately decided to schedule the November 10 special meeting to discuss whether it would continue to comply with the law and to allow for the broader community to weigh in.

Monday night’s meeting opened with Colin Hurd, deputy counsel for the Maine Human Rights Commission, clarifying precisely what is covered by the state human rights law.

“Under the Maine Human Rights Act, it’s illegal to prevent a person from playing sports on the team of their gender identity solely because their sex assigned at birth is different from the people that they will be playing with or against,” Hurd explained. “Furthermore, under the same provision, it’s illegal to prevent a person from using the restroom or locker room that most closely corresponds with their gender identity. So, the law, the Human Rights Act, is pretty unequivocal on these matters.”

Following the meeting’s hour-long public comment period, Conrad once again reiterated that it is not the board’s role “to determine or debate the law,” adding that in recent years, the board has consistently voted to follow state law, even when individual members disagreed with it. While she encouraged board members to voice their objections to the law, she also expressed her hope that they would vote to follow it, as not doing so would likely invite a lawsuit that they would lose, “and the taxpayers of our town would have to foot the bill.”

While some speakers at both the November 4 and 10 meetings seemed to reference a February 5 executive order banning transgender women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports (which neither changed nor established any law) and his administration’s interpretation of Title IX, Conrad noted that no court has ruled so far that any federal law supersedes the Maine Human Rights Act. She also noted that attempts in the state’s most recent legislative session to restrict trans people’s participation in sports have all been rejected.

As Them notes, the dust-up in St. George follows Maine’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’s months-long feud with the president over her refusal to comply with his anti-trans executive order. Mills has argued that the state’s human rights law prevents her from banning trans athletes from women’s and girls’ sports. However, as Them notes, several school districts in the state have nonetheless opted to institute trans sports bans in compliance with the executive order. An anti-trans advocacy group recently launched a new effort to amend the MHRA via ballot referendum so that it is in compliance with the presidential administration’s anti-trans interpretation of Title IX.

November 12, 2025 0

Bondi: Justice Department cut funding for Maine corrections department over transgender inmate

*This is reported by The Hill.

The Justice Department revoked funding for the Maine Department of Corrections over the state’s placement of a transgender woman in a women’s prison, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday.

Bondi made the announcement during an interview with Fox News, saying the department pulled all “nonessential” funding from the state corrections department on Monday after federal officials learned “a guy” was serving time in one of the state’s two women’s facilities. Bondi said the inmate was convicted of murder.

The loss in funding for the department totaled upward of $1.5 million, according to Fox News. The Justice Department did not return a request for comment.

In a news release, Maine’s corrections department said it received formal notice from the Department of Justice on Monday that certain federal grants “are being terminated because they ‘no longer effectuate the program goals or agency priorities.’” The cuts will impact state-run initiatives related to substance abuse treatment and support for children with incarcerated parents, the corrections department said.

The notice from the Justice Department, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, does not mention transgender inmates. “While the Department is aware of related public statements by the United States Attorney General, the notice is the only communication that has been received by the Department,” Maine’s corrections department said.

The move by the Justice Department is the latest development in a monthlong battle between the Trump administration and Maine over the state’s refusal to ban transgender student-athletes from girls’ and women’s sports as ordered by the president.

Another Trump executive order directs transgender women in federal women’s prisons to be moved to men’s facilities. A federal judge temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing that order in February.

April 9, 2025 0

Trump admin cut off food aid for kids in Maine to punish state over trans athletes. They’re suing.

*This is being reported by LGBTQNation.

When Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) told President Donald Trump, “See you in court,” she meant it.

On Monday, Maine sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins over the department’s halt on federal funding for education programs in the state in retaliation for its refusal to ban transgender women and girls from school sports.

As Reuters notes, Rollins announced the funding freeze in an April 2 letter to Mills, saying that the decision was “only the beginning” but that the governor could “end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.” The funding freeze jeopardizes programs that provide free or reduced-price meals to children in Maine schools, childcare centers, and after-school programs.

Mills has publicly clashed with the administration, and with Trump specifically, over its assertion that allowing transgender women and girls to participate in women’s and girls’ sports violates Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding.

In February, the Maine Principals Association announced that it would not comply with Trump’s February 5 executive order banning transgender student-athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. After Trump threatened to cut off the state’s funding, Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey accused the president of using school children “as pawns in advancing his political agenda” and vowed to “take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides.”

“The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the president’s threats,” Mills said.

During a February 21 meeting with Democratic and Republican governors at the White House, Trump singled out 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 she would see him in court.

In its lawsuit, Maine calls the USDA’s funding freeze a “blatantly unlawful action” in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. Rollins, the state argues, “took this action without following any of the statutory and regulatory requirements that must be complied with when terminating federal funds based on alleged violations of Title IX.”

The state argues that Rollins provided no legal basis for her assertion that by allowing trans students to participate in women’s and girls’ sports, Maine is in violation of Title IX and that her interpretation of the law is wrong. “Indeed, several federal courts have held that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause require schools to permit transgender girls and women to play on girls’ and women’s teams,” the complaint reads.

However, the state is not asking the court to interpret Title IX. It merely asks the court to vacate Rollins’s “arbitrary, capricious” funding freeze for failing to meet the “statutory and regulatory requirements that the federal government must comply with before it may freeze federal funds owed to a state.”

In a statement, Frey said that Trump “and his cabinet secretaries do not make the law, and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the president that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law.”

April 8, 2025 0