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A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release funding that the department is withholding from Maine over the state’s alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX.
In a 70-page order, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock Jr.
granted Maine’s request for a temporary restraining order based on an argument by the state that the USDA froze funding “without following the process required by federal statute.” The USDA began investigating Maine in February for allegedly violating Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, by allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports. On April 2, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins sent a letter to Gov.
Janet Mills saying the department was pausing federal funding to certain educational programs . The penalty echoed actions by several federal agencies that have targeted Maine over its transgender athlete policies, most recently the U.S.
Department of Education, which on Friday referred its finding of violation to the U.S. Department of Justice and started the process to end all federal K-12 funding to Maine .
The U.S. Department of Health and Human services also found against Maine and referred its case to the DOJ for enforcement .
The USDA in March froze a large amount of funding to the University of Maine System. But that was quickly reversed after intervention from U.S.
Sen. Susan Collins, the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation. The Mills administration, the Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees school sports in Maine, and others targeted for the alleged Title IX violations have maintained that to exclude transgender females from girls’ and women’s sports violates the Maine Civil Rights Act.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said on Friday that the restraining order “confirms the Trump Administration did not follow the rule of law when it cut program funds that go to feed school children and vulnerable adults. “This order preserves Maine’s access to certain congressionally appropriated funds by prohibiting an unlawful freeze by the administration. No one in our constitutional republic is above the law and we will continue to fight to hold this administration to account,” Frey said.
It’s unclear how Friday’s order will affect the flow of federal funding from the USDA to Maine. Among the USDA’s arguments against the restraining order was that the U.S.
District Court hearing the case does not have jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit. More articles from the BDN.
