Minnesota Joins Maine in Suing Trump Admin. for Protecting Girls’ Sports
Minnesota is throwing its hat in the ring with the state of Maine by fighting for the rights of boys to trample young girls by competing against them in their own sports. On Tuesday, the North Star State sued the Trump administration over its executive order protecting women’s sports by banning transgender-identifying biological men from participating.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) argued that the order is an unconstitutional and “unconscionable attack on this tiny minority of the population” and that Minnesota will not participate in this “shameful bullying” by Trump (White House spokesman Harrison Fields noted that the irony of a grown man bullying women into accepting biological men into their sports is somehow lost on Ellison). The lawsuit seeks to protect Minnesota’s federal funding that the administration has threatened to withhold from the state.
In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote letters to Minnesota, Maine, and California threatening legal action and revocation of federal funding if they continue to violate Title IX and the executive order by allowing transgender athletes access to female sports. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools.
Maine has fought back against the Trump administration by arguing that it is following federal law and its own human rights code which it says prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Governor Janet Mills (D) is also claiming “states’ rights” as an excuse. “This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law,” she said in a statement.
But Bondi didn’t buy these arguments and announced a lawsuit last week against Maine for violating federal law.
“We are going to continue to fight for women,” Bondi said last Wednesday. “Maine’s leadership has refused to comply at every turn, so we have no other choice, we are taking them to court.”
And it’s not just Maine Bondi is intent on going after. “I don’t care if it’s one, I don’t care if it’s two, I don’t care if it’s 100 — it’s going to stop, and it’s going to stop in every single state,” Bondi told reporters, suggesting Minnesota and California are the next targets on her list for openly flouting Trump’s executive order.
This warning is why Ellison is taking preemptive action for his state and suing the Trump administration first. Ellison is presumably hoping for the same outcome as Maine’s lawsuit that resulted in the unfreezing of USDA funds that the Trump administration ordered over the state’s noncompliance with Title IX.
“This is the 15th lawsuit the Minnesota attorney general has filed against the Trump administration,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “He claims to want the best health options for transgender youth. If that were true, he would protect all Minnesotan children from gender ideology. By insisting that boys be allowed in girls’ private spaces, Ellison proves that HE is the bully.”