The Trump administration sued Minnesota and its school athletics governing body on Monday, carrying out a threat to punish the state for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.
The lawsuit is part of a broader fight over the rights of transgender youth. More than two dozen states have laws prohibiting transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports and some have barred gender-affirming surgeries for minors. Courts have blocked some of those policies.
In the lawsuit filed Monday, the Justice Department alleges the state Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League are violating Title IX, a federal law against sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal money.
“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office was checking on a response. League officials did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine and California, and has threatened the federal funding of some universities over transgender athletes, including San Jose State in California and the University of Pennsylvania.
Minnesota officials have long resisted the federal push to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports. The state filed a preemptive lawsuit last April, saying Minnesota’s human rights act supersedes executive orders issued by President Donald Trump last year. The lawsuit also says the state is already in compliance with Title IX. A ruling is pending on the federal government’s motion to dismiss that case.
The Justice Department said in a statement that Minnesota violates Title IX “by requiring girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions that are designated exclusively for girls and allowing boys to invade intimate spaces designated exclusively for girls, such as multi-person locker rooms and bathrooms.”
According to the Justice Department, Minnesota’s Department of Education receives more than $3 billion annually in federal funding from the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services. It says that funding is contingent on compliance with Title IX.
The lawsuit asks a federal court in Minnesota to declare the state in violation of Title IX and order it to prohibit transgender girls from competing in girls’ prep sports.
The civil rights offices at the Education and Health and Human Services departments put the state and league on notice last September that they faced legal action if they didn’t stop violating the federal law.
