Maine's attorney general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, seeking to restore federal agriculture funding caught up in the state's weeks-long fight with the White House over transgender athletes.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins informed Maine Gov. Janet Mills of the funding freeze last week, writing in a letter that "your defiance of federal law has cost your state." Rollins said she was freezing funding for some administrative and technological functions unless Maine comes into compliance with President Trump's ban on transgender athletes in girls' and women's sports.
But in lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Attorney General Aaron Frey wrote that the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not follow the procedures needed to cut off funding. For instance, Frey said the agency never conducted its own investigation, notified the state or reported its findings to Congress.
Frey also criticized the tone of Rollins' letter to Maine.
"Sounding more like a hostage taker seeking a ransom payment than a cabinet-level federal official, Secretary Rollins warned that '[t]his is only the beginning' of the federal government’s funding freezes directed at the State of Maine, and that the State is 'free to end it at any time' by capitulating to the President’s demands regarding the participation of transgender athletes in school sports," reads the court filing.
The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. It's just the the latest twist in Maine's six-week fight with the Trump administration over transgender athletes.
The Trump administration has launched numerous investigations into Maine ever since the president had a brief-but-tense exchange with Mills during a White House luncheon in late-February. During that exchange, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine unless the state complied with his executive order banning transgender athletes from girls' and women's sports. Mills countered that Maine was following federal and state law — including the Maine Human Rights Act, a law which prohibits discrimination in extracurricular activities based on a person's gender identity. She then told the president, "See you in court."
The Trump administration said Maine's policy violates Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational settings. But Frey's office wrote in Monday's court filing that numerous federal courts have said Title IX requires schools to permit transgender athletes to play on girls' and women's teams.
Both the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have found the state in violation of Title IX and have referred to threatened to refer the state to the Department of Justice for additional potential sanctions. To date, the state has declined to agree to demands from the Trump administration to come into compliance, setting the state on a path toward a legal showdown.
Frey's office said that the USDA's latest announcement of cuts will impact vulnerable populations.
In her letter to Mills, Rollins wrote that the funding freeze would not impact federal food assistance programs.
"If a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow," Rollins said.
But in Monday's lawsuit, the attorney general's office said that one day after Rollins sent that letter, staff in the Child Nutrition Program were unable to access several sources of federal funding. Frey said that money is used to reimburse organizations that provide food to low-income children and adults and that without alternative funding, employees in the Child Nutrition Program will have to be laid off.
"Without staff and equipment, there will be no way for CNP staff to collect, approve, and process claims for reimbursement from schools and other facilities providing meals to children and vulnerable adults," reads one court filing. "There will thus be no way to get funds from the USDA to schools and other facilities, and children will not be fed."
