Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking “to restore federal agriculture funding caught up in the state’s weeks-long fight with the White House over transgender athletes,” according to Maine Public. The frozen funding, AG Frey notes, includes support for programs that provide reduced-price meals to kids in schools and childcare centers.
Reports Maine Public:
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins informed Maine Gov. Janet Mills of the funding freeze last week, writing in a letter that “your defiance of federal law has cost your state.” Rollins said she was freezing funding for some administrative and technological functions unless Maine comes into compliance with President Trump’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
But in lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Attorney General Aaron Frey wrote that the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not follow the procedures needed to cut off funding. For instance, Frey said the agency never conducted its own investigation, notified the state or reported its findings to Congress.
Frey also criticized the tone of Rollins’ letter to Maine.
“Sounding more like a hostage taker seeking a ransom payment than a cabinet-level federal official, Secretary Rollins warned that ‘[t]his is only the beginning’ of the federal government’s funding freezes directed at the State of Maine, and that the State is ‘free to end it at any time’ by capitulating to the President’s demands regarding the participation of transgender athletes in school sports,” reads the court filing.
The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. It’s just the the latest twist in Maine’s six-week fight with the Trump administration over transgender athletes.
The Trump administration has launched numerous investigations into Maine ever since the president had a brief-but-tense exchange with Mills during a White House luncheon in late-February. During that exchange, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from Maine unless the state complied with his executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Mills countered that Maine was following federal and state law — including the Maine Human Rights Act, a law which prohibits discrimination in extracurricular activities based on a person’s gender identity. She then told the president, “See you in court.”
Read the complete Maine Public story here.
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