Attorney General Aaron Frey and Gov. Janet Mills discuss on Friday Maine’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over school nutrition funds that were withheld because of alleged Title IX violations. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Maine have reached a settlement in a lawsuit over the agency’s decision to freeze about $3 million in federal funding to the state because of a disagreement over transgender girls’ participation in sports.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced in March that she would freeze funding to Maine education, saying the state violates Title IX because its student-athlete policies allow transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams.
The announcement said the freeze would not affect any food programs for students, only administrative and technological costs, but the state Department of Education said it was unable to access funds for administrative staff that oversee nutrition programs.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a lawsuit in early April, seeking a temporary restraining order to restore funding.
In the settlement, signed Friday morning, the agency agreed not to freeze, terminate or interfere with the state’s access to USDA funds based on the alleged Title IX violations without going through the legally required process.
Frey and Gov. Janet Mills celebrated the news at a Friday afternoon news conference in Augusta, saying the USDA has “backed down.”
“It’s good to feel a victory like this,” Mills said, appearing exuberant as she declared that the state had won this court battle with the Trump administration.
“I stood in the White House and when confronted by the president of the United States, I told him I’d see him in court. Well we did see him in court, and we won.”
The governor said the federal agency froze money that helps to feed 172,000 children in Maine without any due process, without any rationale and without any ongressional authorization.
“Maine had no choice but to bring suit to confront this unlawful action by the USDA,” Frey said during the brief remarks.
“This lawsuit is necessary to hold the USDA accountable under the law, and this settlement confirms that the funding at issue is not to be frozen unless the USDA actually follows the law.”
In its lawsuit, Maine argued that the USDA was preventing students from being fed, that Rollins had not provided a legal basis for her interpretation of Title IX and that the agency did not follow the federal rules for revoking funds.
The agency responded that it had frozen just $3 million, not enough to warrant an emergency temporary restraining order. But a federal judge granted the state’s request on April 11, temporarily stopping the department from cutting or pausing funding.
A spokesperson for the department did not respond to questions about the settlement Friday.
OTHER SUITS STILL PENDING
The USDA matter is just one of several ways the Trump administration has attempted to pull education funding from Maine over the alleged Title IX violations.
A lawsuit against the Maine Department of Education, announced by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 16, threatens to pull future and retroactive federal education funding, which primarily supports students with disabilities and low-income students. That lawsuit is ongoing.
Mills declined to answer questions Friday about that lawsuit except to say she’s “confident” the state will win that case, too.
“That’s a separate complaint they filed a few weeks ago, it’s only a one-page complaint that cites no authority, no case, no law. We’ll see them in court on that one as well,” Mills said.
She wouldn’t say whether she has discussed changing state law or the Maine Principals’ Association’s policy that allows transgender student-athletes to compete on the team of their choice, but not both. Mills has previously said the subject was “worthy of discussion.”
Asked if she expected the Trump administration to continue making similar threats, Mills responded, “I can’t tell what he’s going to do from one day to the next. Can you?”
“These bullying tactics, we will not tolerate them,” she said.
