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The U.S. Department of Education said it is moving to strip federal K-12 education funding from Maine due to what it called the state’s refusal to comply with Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination in education.
The Friday announcement followed a department investigation into the state’s policies governing transgender athletes. Those investigations determined that the state was in violation of Title IX, which the state has denied.
“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 department said in a statement announcing the move.
The move represents an unprecedented attempt by the federal government to speedily take away K-12 funding that has been appropriated by Congress and is firmly grounded in federal law. President Donald Trump has made trans athletes a major political issue and has used the federal government to root out gender-affirming policies in the early days of his second term.
The federal Education Department said it is starting an administrative proceeding to take away Maine’s K-12 funding, including formula grants — which include funding streams like Title I for high-poverty schools and IDEA grants for students with disabilities — as well as discretionary grants. Maine’s state education department has spent nearly $400 million in federal funding on elementary and secondary education in recent years, the Maine Monitor reported. In addition, the federal department said it has referred the results of its Title IX investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice for “further enforcement action.”
The Department of Health and Human Services had already referred its investigation that found Maine in violation of Title IX to the Justice Department.
Earlier on Friday, the Maine state attorney general’s office told the federal Education Department that the state would not sign a resolution agreement drafted by the Trump administration in the wake of the investigation. That proposed agreement features several pages of demands, including that Maine must strip any trans girl who’s ever placed in a Maine girls sports competition of her title and give it to the athlete behind her, along with an apology letter.
The federal Education Department did not immediately respond to several questions from Chalkbeat.
Andrew Ujifusa is a story editor at Chalkbeat.
