The Division of Schooling on Friday referred a Title IX investigation into Maine colleges to the Justice Division after the state failed to achieve a decision with the Trump administration over a discovering that it violated federal anti-discrimination regulation by permitting transgender college students to take part in ladies’ sports activities.
“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,” mentioned Craig Trainor, performing assistant Schooling secretary for civil rights.
The Schooling Division in its announcement mentioned it can additionally provoke administrative proceedings to find out whether or not to terminate federal Okay-12 training funding for Maine’s state training division, together with system and discretionary grants.
“The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department,” Trainor mentioned. “Governor [Janet] Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom — be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Each the Division of Schooling and the Division of Well being and Human Providers (HHS), which not too long ago started investigating colleges and states that permit transgender athletes to compete in ladies’ sports activities, mentioned in March that Maine had violated Title IX, the federal civil rights regulation towards intercourse discrimination that the Trump White Home says prohibits trans athletes from competing on ladies’ and ladies’s groups.
The HHS investigation lined the Maine Division of Schooling, the Maine Principals’ Affiliation and Greely Excessive Faculty, a faculty of about 700 college students within the Portland suburbs. The Schooling Division’s findings utilized solely to the state training division.
Each businesses gave Maine officers till the top of March to undertake insurance policies barring transgender college students from ladies’ sports activities. On the final day of the month, the Division of Schooling issued what it referred to as a “final warning” to Maine’s state training division, saying it will flip the investigation over to the Justice Division if the 2 entities didn’t come to an settlement by April 11.
A spokesperson for the state training division didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
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