UMaine Agrees To Protect Women's Sports After Funding Threat
The University of Maine (UMaine) system decided to “side with sanity,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), agreeing not to allow male athletes to compete in female sports following a federal funding threat from the Trump administration.
According to USDA, the UMaine system (a network of eight universities) will comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order that threatens to pull federal funding from schools that allow transgender-identifying athletes to compete in sports that do not align with their actual sex.
Compliance from UMaine came after the system saw a temporary cessation in funding after an investigation was opened into the system for Title IX compliance. While USDA now says that the UMaine system proved its compliance with the executive order, the agency also added, “Any false claim by the UMaine can, and will, result in onerous and even potentially criminal financial liability.”
“The University of Maine System (UMaine) has clearly communicated its compliance with Title IX’s requirement to protect equal opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports, as articulated in President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order,” USDA said in a press release. “UMaine’s decision to side with sanity is a win for women and girls in Maine.”
According to the department, UMaine provided evidence that it does not allow “a male student-athlete to identify as a female student-athlete to establish individual eligibility for NCAA-sanctioned women’s sports.”
The school system also proved it does not allow males to participate in contact sports with females for individual or team events, as well as compliance with NCAA rules that do not allow males to compete against women in any NCAA-sanctioned women’s competition.
Maine’s transgender sports problems are not over, however, as the USDA made clear in its press release, noting, “The choice for the rest of Maine is simple: protect equal opportunities for women, as required by law, or lose funding.”
The state’s schools have also come under investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Education for transgender-related issues.
Earlier this month, HHS found Maine to be in violation of Title IX civil rights law for continuing to allow males to compete in female sports. Maine “violates Title IX by denying female student athletes in the State of Maine an equal opportunity to participate in, and obtain the benefits of participation, ‘in any interscholastic, intercollegiate, club or intramural athletics’ offered by the state by allowing male athletes to compete against female athletes in current and future athletic events.”
HHS has given the Maine Department of Education until March 27 to comply. The U.S. Department of Education also found Maine in violation of Title IX, and the state has until March 29 to comply.
As The Federalist reported, Maine has other transgender-related issues as well, including parental exclusion policies that require school staff and administrators to hide any transgender identification of children from their own parents — also in violation of a Trump executive order.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.