Maine Will Face Consequences for Title IX Noncompliance

Last Friday, the ED announced it had begun an administrative proceeding to stop all K-12 education funding to the MDOE, which includes “formula and discretionary grants,” over its “noncompliance.” The ED also referred its investigation into the MDOE to the Justice Department for “further enforcement action.”

In the announcement, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said, “The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity.”

The enforcement actions stem from President Donald Trump’s Executive Order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” issued February 5, 2025, that stated Title IX protects women from sex-based discrimination and that ED would investigate schools that fail to preserve the integrity of female sports. According to the White House, the order aims to put a stop the “endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls” in sports while halting the “dangerous and unfair” invasion of private spaces where females have been forced to “appear unclothed before males.”

Several weeks after the order was issued, President Trump spoke at a governors’ meeting at the White House and had a verbal exchange with Gov. Mills strongly advising her to comply with the order. Gov. Mills responded by saying, “See you in court.”

Trainor noted that the MDOE will indeed have to defend its “discriminatory practices” before an ED administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department.

Already, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stopped funding for “administrative and technological functions” in Maine schools. In addition, the USDA temporarily paused about $30 million for the University of Maine System until a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding the funds. The Justice Department has also halted all “non-essential funding” to Maine’s prisons for keeping a gender-confused male convicted of murder in a female prison.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Maine cannot ignore the biological reality that men and women are different. So many female athletes have been competitively, physically, and emotionally harmed by policies allowing males into their sports and private spaces. Title IX exists to protect women and girls and it must be enforced. Governor Mills is not above the law.”