Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Monday over the agency’s recent decision to withhold federal funds from the state over its refusal to comply with the Trump administration’s orders to ban transgender athletes from girl’s and women’s sports in schools.
The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine alleges the USDA’s funding freeze is “blatantly unlawful” and hampers the state’s ability to feed schoolchildren who rely on nutrition assistance programs.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, named in Monday’s lawsuit, said in announcing the freeze on Wednesday that the action would affect funding only “for certain administrative and technological functions in schools” and would not affect federal feeding programs.
Rollins wrote in a letter to Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), with whom President Trump has publicly clashed over the state’s noncompliance with his executive order on transgender athletes, that the pause in funding “is only the beginning.”
The USDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
Monday’s lawsuit argues that, despite Rollins saying otherwise, the agency’s funding freeze has impacted programs that feed children in the state.
On Thursday, the day after Rollins sent her letter to Mills, the Child Nutrition program, housed within Maine’s education department, “was unable to access several sources of federal funds,” according to the lawsuit, including administrative funds that pay the salaries of individuals who run statewide initiatives like the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which provides meals for young children and at-risk kids outside school hours and adults in adult day care programs.
Without those funds, “providers will have to cease operations and children (and vulnerable adults) will not be fed,” according to the lawsuit.
The complaint also claims that the USDA violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not formally informing Maine that it was not in compliance with Title IX, as Rollins alleged in her letter, before freezing federal funds. It also did not investigate, hold a hearing, make findings on the record or submit a report to Congress, violating the law.
The lawsuit adds that Rollins “provided no legal basis for her interpretation of Title IX, and her interpretation 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 states.
Last month, following investigations Mills has called “politically directed,” the departments of Education and Health and Human Services found Maine to have violated Title IX, the federal law against sex discrimination that the Trump administration has interpreted to prohibit transgender athletes from female sports.
The Education Department last week issued what it called a “final warning” to Maine’s state department of education before it turns the investigation over to the Justice Department.
