The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Maine in an effort to challenge state policies regarding transgender athletes who compete in the sport of girls and girls, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday.
The lawsuit accused Maine’s policy of violating the title IX and originating from a broader effort by the Trump government to highlight the problems that they considered politically damaging to Democrats.
“The State of Maine, through the Ministry of Education, openly and challenging violates the law of federal anti-discrimination by upholding policies that require girls to compete with boys in exclusively designated athletic competitions for girls,” the lawsuit said. “By prioritizing gender identity rather than biological reality, Maine’s policy to seize female athletes from fair competition, deny the equivalent opportunities of athletics, and describe them to increased risk of physical injury and psychological damage.”
Bondi announced the lawsuit with anti-trans activist Riley Gaines and parents and other students from Maine who had objected to state policies regarding transgender athletes.
“The Department of Justice will not sit when women are discriminated against in sports. This is about sports. This is also about the personal safety of this young woman,” Bondi said in a comment at DOJ. “I met many of these women for the past few weeks and months, and what they had been through was very terrible.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi attended a press conference, when he revealed action against the State of Maine, which was locked in a dispute with Trump’s administration on the transgender policy, at the Department of Justice in Washington, April 16, 2025.
Leah Millis/Reuters
The lawsuit was probably only the first in a series of legal challenges brought by Trump’s government, after Bondi had previously sent a warning letter in February to State Officials in Maine, California and Minnesota ordered them to “comply with the Federal Anti-Discrimination Law which required them to keep men from women’s sports.”
Democratic Governor Maine Janet Mills has condemned the efforts of Trump’s government to remove federal funds from Maine as executive outrections and reduces the problem of transgender athletes who participated in the sports event of girls and girls.
“Because there are two, maybe two, Trans athletes who compete in the schools now, they decide to kill funds for school nutrition programs, school lunch programs, fully,” Mills said in an interview earlier this week. “The law says if you don’t like what the state is doing here, you can’t just take the funds here.”