The Trump administration has taken legal action and moved to cut off K-12 funding to a Democratic state over its refusal to protect girls’ privacy in public schools and accommodations.

The Department of Education announced last Friday that it had initiated an administrative proceeding to terminate all K-12 funding to the Maine Department of Education, “including formula and discretionary grants,” over Title IX violations by allowing males who identify as female to compete against and change in front of girls. The administration also referred MDOE to the Justice Department for possible legal action.

“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,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. The Department of Education found Maine had failed to comply with the order on March 19 and sent a final letter of warning on March 31.

State officials doubled down on their agenda. “We will not sign the Resolution Agreement, and we do not have revisions to counter propose,” wrote Maine Assistant Attorney General Sarah Forster to Bradley Burke, regional director for the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights. “We agree that we are at an impasse.”

“Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender [boys] and [men] to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” insisted Forster, although the Nixon administration explicitly enacted Title IX to create adequate funding and a level playing ground for female athletes. Males are not females.

“It’s a strange day when you have to go all the way to Washington, D.C., to be heard — but that’s exactly what Maine people have had to do,” Nicholas Adolphsen, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, told The Washington Stand. “While Governor Mills and Attorney General Frey push a radical agenda, doubling down on boys in girls’ sports, President Trump is standing up for Maine’s young women and the basic fairness Title IX was built on. Mills and Frey seem to only be listening to the far-Left — while the concerns of everyday Mainers are being brushed aside.”

Forster noted rightly that “various federal courts have held that Title IX and/or the Equal Protection Clause require schools to allow” men to compete against women for prizes and scholarships, use female locker rooms, and wash up in the girls’ showers.

“The situation in Maine is going to force this issue to be resolved by the Supreme Court,” predicted Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, in a comment to The Washington Stand. “Federal law supersedes state law, but the enforcement of Title IX regulations has left the door open for all kinds of misguided interpretations on the part of states who want to ignore the boundaries of human dignity and common sense in the service of an ‘inclusivity’ that ignores biological and practical realities.”

The referral continues the legal saga unleashed when Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) taunted President Trump, “See you in court” at a February governors meeting at the White House.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins halted some funding of unspecified “administrative and technological functions in schools.” Last month, the USDA briefly paused approximately $100 million in funding to the University of Maine System, but it soon allowed the funds to flow. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) sued the Trump administration to preserve his state’s access to taxpayer money. U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a temporary restraining order against the USDA last Friday.

Last Monday, the Trump administration ended all non-essential funding to Maine’s prisons after it placed a 6’1”, 245-pound man who murdered both his parents and his dog in a female prison, because he identifies as transgender.

“Augusta has abandoned common sense, but Washington is paying attention,” Adolphsen told TWS, “and they’ve got our backs.”