The U.S. Department of Agriculture has agreed to halt efforts to freeze federal funds for child nutrition programs in Maine. In exchange the state will drop its lawsuit against the agency.
The settlement agreement closes a lawsuit brought by Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey after the USDA yanked $3 million in federal funds in retaliation for a state law allowing transgender athletes to participate on girls' sports teams.
Frey's office sued the agency asserting that the move was unlawful and didn't follow a procedure required to halt funding. U.S. District Judge John Woodcock granted the state's request for a temporary restraining order last month, finding that Maine was likely to prevail.
In a statement, Frey said that it's unfortunate that Maine had to sue to get the USDA to comply with the law, but that he's happy the case is resolved. Later in the afternoon during a press conference with Frey, Gov. Janet Mills celebrated the settlement but also took a few rhetorical swipes at President Trump and his administration, saying "we took him to court and we won."
"These bullying tactics, we will not tolerate them," Mills, a Democrat and former Maine attorney general, told reporters gathered in her Cabinet room. "Nobody in this country should tolerate them. You don't appease bullies. They never stop."
The funding freeze was one of several moves made by the Trump administration to punish Maine after Gov. Janet Mills clashed with the president at the White House on Feb. 21.
In April 2 letter to the governor, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins warned that halting the funding was "only the beginning" unless the state complied with the president's interpretation of Title IX, a 1972 law that expanded education opportunities for women. In its complaint filed in federal court days later, Frey's office described Rollins' letter as "sounding more like a hostage taker seeking a ransom payment than a cabinet-level federal official."
In an interview on Friday, Frey said the Rollins' letter was part of a larger effort to punish the state.
"They were so quick to send this nastygram that they didn't even take time to look at the regulations that they're supposed to be complying with, or Title IX, which is what they were saying they were enforcing," he said.
The day after Gov. Mills received the letter, the Maine Department of Education's Child Nutrition Program was unable to access several sources of federal funding.
Rollins' letter to Mills followed a series of actions taken by several federal agencies over Maine's alleged noncompliance with President Donald Trump's Feb. 5 executive order that bans transgender athletes from participating in girls and women's sports.
The Maine Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity. And according to the Maine Principals' Association there were two transgender high school athletes who competed in girls' sports last year.
At a meeting of governors at the White House in February, Trump called out Mills to ask if she intended to comply with his order. Mills responded that she would comply with state and federal laws.
"Well, I'm — we are the federal law," Trump said. "You better do it. You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't."
Mills replied: "See you in court."
Mills referred to that incident multiple times on Friday while discussing the settlement.
"The USDA has backed down and they have agreed to stop freezing funds for the school lunch program that feeds 172,000 kids in Maine — freezing without due process, freezing without any rationale, freezing without any congressional basis," Mills said.
The USDA settlement does not affect the lawsuit filed by the Trump administration against the Maine Department of Education for alleged Title IX violations. Filings in that case are still underway.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota is pursing a preemptive lawsuit against the Trump administration to defend a state law that is similar to Maine's Human Rights Act and its gender identity protections. Minnesota and California had previously received warning letters from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that they were violating Title IX.
