Despite the Trump administration threatening to withhold funding from Maine schools for allegedly violating federal rules against sex-based discrimination, no funding has been permanently taken away from public schools, so far.

In a , President Donald Trump told Maine Gov. Janet Mills during a February National Governors Association event at the White House that she must comply with his executive order barring transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Otherwise, he warned, “you’re not going to get federal funding.”

In the wake of that, several federal agencies targeted Maine for its inclusive policies that allow transgender girls to play on girls sports teams. The Trump administration argued the policy is in violation of Title IX, the federal nondiscrimination law that bans sex-based discrimination, and opened several investigations into the Maine Department of Education (DOE). An investigation was also launched into the Maine Principal’s Association, which regulates school sports, and Greely High School in Cumberland after a state legislator posted a picture of a trans athlete from the school on her legislative Facebook page.

In April, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that Maine had violated Title IX and referred their cases to the U.S. Department of Justice. In a , the federal Education Department also said it would simultaneously “initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding, including formula and discretionary grants.”

Last year, the Maine DOE received $183.9 million from the U.S. Department of Education, which of the federal funding the department received that year.

The is pending, according to the Maine Attorney General’s office, but neither federal agency withheld any funding from the Maine DOE as a result of their guilty finding, said Maine Deputy Attorney General Christopher Taub.

Withholding of federal education funding was one of the primary concerns as they introduced several bills aiming to restrict trans rights this past legislative session, .

Also this spring, several from Maine, many of which were challenged or walked back. For example, in April, Maine the U.S. Department of Agriculture for freezing school nutrition funding, which federal courts ordered the agency to restore.

The ruling marked Maine’s first legal victory in fighting the Title IX violation allegations, but other lawsuits are still pending.

The USDA, which never launched an official probe, is the only agency so far to withhold federal funding from Maine schools, the attorney general’s office confirmed. The funding was frozen on April 2, and restored by a federal judge’s order on April 11. to Mills announcing the freeze, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins wrote, “this pause does not impact federal feeding programs or direct assistance to Mainers; if a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow.”

But according to Jane McLucas, Maine’s child nutrition director, the agency froze roughly $2.75 million in funds that impacted various aspects of the school nutrition program. While reimbursement funds for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs were still accessible, money used to run those programs — including for the salaries of 12 state employees, as well as funding for office technology and oversight — was temporarily blocked, McLucas said. Also, funding for the Child and Adult Care Food Program, which provides food reimbursements to eligible children and adults in after school programs, child and adult day care centers, was also hit, with providers losing access to “cash in lieu” payments they use to buy food and to administrative funds that cover staffing costs.

Two months later, Maine also the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) after the agency canceled a $9 million grant to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. That grant had been awarded to restore tidal salt marsh habitat and protect coastal infrastructure from flooding. The lawsuit, which is also still pending, alleges that NOAA may have terminated the grant because of Maine’s alleged violation of Title IX, according to Danna Hayes, director of public affairs for the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

Nearly $50 million in federal funding has also been , as of May, including grants that were temporarily frozen and then restored, terminated or threatened. This funding was cut despite the USDA in March that the university system is in compliance with the Trump administration’s transgender policy.

How much of this funding was related to Title IX is unclear, and the university system declined to provide specifics on at least one grant that was withheld due to Title IX, then temporarily restored and ultimately terminated.

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The Republican-controlled House passed two bills last week that would bar transgender girls from competing on girls sports teams. But Democrats, who control the Senate, say they will not consider the legislation.

“Our legislative agenda is long and attacking kids is not on it,” Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, told Chalkbeat in a statement.

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Failure to take up the Republican-sponsored bills could draw unwelcome political attention to Michigan at a time when the Trump administration has targeted for investigation states that don’t comply with its view on Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on sex.

Since taking office for the second time, targeting the rights of transgender Americans. One in January said the U.S. government would only recognize two genders, male and female, while another issued that month attempted to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. A February called for schools to block trans girls from competing on girls sports teams.

Trump has  funding from schools that don’t comply with his executive orders.

Executive orders cannot override existing state and federal statutes, though, and there have been to the constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders.

But the Trump administration’s have stoked fears over how he intends to enforce it. Multiple federal agencies into Maine this year after a heated exchange between Trump and the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, in which she promised to follow the state’s law protecting transgender rights.

In one of those federal cases, a judge issued an injunction to stop the government from freezing federal funds to the state. But there are to enforce.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said other states are at risk of losing federal funding for Title IX violations, specifically singling out California and Minnesota. Officials in those states have  with Trump’s executive order. Bondi’s office announced Wednesday that it has .

Like some other states, Michigan recently expanded state protections from discrimination on the basis of sexuality and gender identity and expression. The expansion of those protections two years ago has long been a signature issue for Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

She signed the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act in 2023, saying in a statement that “Michigan is a place that will fight for your freedom to be yourself.”

It is possible what has happened in Maine could happen in Michigan, said Nancy Chi Cantalupo, associate professor of law at Wayne State University.

“But what is happening in Maine is in no way a success for the current administration at this point,” she said, noting that the federal government has never withdrawn funds from a state under Title IX or any other civil rights statutes it enforces.

“It’s not like there’s a light switch the federal government can use to just turn off federal funds at its whim,” she said. “There are a lot of steps it has to go through.”

Brinks did not respond to a question about whether she or others in the Democratic Party have concerns Michigan may be targeted by the Trump administration.

Whitmer’s office did not respond to questions about the bills.

In Michigan, a prohibition against trans girls competing on girls sports teams would affect few athletes statewide. The Michigan High School Athletic Association, the private organization that runs the state’s high school sports competitions, said there were no trans girls competing on spring sports teams this year. None played on winter sports teams, while two played on fall teams.

About 25 states similar laws restricting trans girls from playing on sports teams aligned with their gender identity.

Advocates for transgender rights say sports bills aren’t really about limiting the teams trans girls and women can play on.

“If this bill were just about sports, it wouldn’t be proposed in coordination with all of these other anti-trans bills [nationwide,]” said Kye Campbell-Fox, a research assistant and laboratory manager at Michigan State University, who studies the impact of legislation targeting the rights of trans kids. “This is a coordinated campaign to push trans people out of public life.”

Advocates say trans youth don’t feel safe as their rights are attacked

Though the Michigan bills have effectively died, advocates say lawmakers’ focus on the issue — and the language they often use to talk about trans athletes — is still harmful to all trans children.

The Michigan bills, for example, referred to trans girls as “biological males,” ignoring their gender identities. And some lawmakers have said that the presence of trans girls in locker rooms could lead to sexual violence against other girls.

Rep. Mike Harris, a Republican from Waterford, said during a hearing for the bills that he was concerned about the potential for sexual assault if trans girls use girls locker rooms.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to place biological boys and girls in the same room, to strip down naked next to each other,” he said.

There is no evidence to support the idea that trans girls will assault other girls, though there is evidence that when they use bathrooms according to the sex they were assigned at birth.

Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric students and adults to feel freer to make hateful remarks, and LGBTQ+ youth are being affected by it.

“I’m hearing a lot of fear from youth,” said Jude Krajnyák, a regional coordinator for a research policy project at the Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health. “Things everyone else gets to take for granted — like playing soccer in middle school — are rights that are being taken away from us.”

Krajnyák said he heard from a trans girl in middle school who gave up on playing soccer because she said “it’s just not worth” the backlash.

Currently, the Michigan High School Athletic Association determines eligibility for trans girls to play on girls teams on a case-by-case basis. The executive director of the association, Mark Uyl, makes the determination based on a number of factors, including what gender is recorded on the students’ school documents and other paperwork. Students are also asked whether they’ve begun hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries.

“The MHSAA asks for documentation on therapy and surgery as our policy allows for a waiver to be both approved and denied — and part of that decision is based on where in the transitioning process a student is at the time,” Geoff Kimmerly, director of communications for the association, told Chalkbeat.

The policy went into effect in 2012, according to the association. It aligned with federal law during the Obama administration, as well as federal requirements from the Office for Civil Rights during Trump’s first term and Biden’s presidency.

“The MHSAA follows and will continue to follow all applicable state and federal laws,” said Kimmerly in a statement. “We are monitoring developments in this regard closely.”

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate failed to advance a measure Monday night that would bar transgender students from participating on women’s school sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

The bill would help codify into law President Donald Trump’s , which carries out this exact ban and threatens to rescind federal funds from “educational programs” if schools .

The move also reflects a broader GOP-led push to enact . Across the country, an increasing number of states have passed laws banning trans students from participating in sports that align with their gender identity.

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The party-line 51-45 vote could not garner 60 senators to break through the legislative filibuster.

Four senators did not vote, including Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming as well as Democratic Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Peter Welch of Vermont.

Ahead of the vote, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said on the Senate floor Monday that she stood in “strong opposition to any attempt by the federal government to meddle in decisions about who can and cannot participate in school sports.”

“This is a decision for local communities, where players and parents can participate in that discussion at the local level. This is a decision for sports leagues to thoughtfully craft policy that actually takes seriously what is best for all players, not blanket mandates that will undoubtedly have unintended consequences for the safety of all students,” the Wisconsin Democrat said.

Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville  in the Senate in January, and the bill gained several Republican .

“Thankfully, President Trump just signed an executive order that said, ‘No more — no more federal money to any state that allows this to happen,’ but you have to understand, this only lasts as long as President Trump’s in office, so we need this vote … to pass so we can make this into law,” Tuberville said on the Senate floor before the vote.

Title IX

The bill seeks to amend Title IX so that “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

Title IX is a landmark federal civil rights law that bars schools that receive federal funding from practicing sex-based discrimination.

Trump’s executive order asks federal agencies to interpret Title IX in a way that complies with the order.

The president’s initiative provoked complex questions about enforcement mechanisms and consequences for schools that do not comply. The administration has already launched a number of  across the .

House action

Meanwhile, the  to the Senate’s in January, which GOP Rep. Greg Steube of Florida introduced.

That measure advanced 218-206, with all House Democrats in opposition except for Texas U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. North Carolina Democratic Rep. Don Davis voted “present.”

The , an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted that there has been “considerable disinformation and misinformation about what the inclusion of transgender youth in sports entails” and that trans students’ sports participation “has been a non-issue.”

At least 25 states have enacted a law that bans trans students from taking part in sports that align with their gender identity, according to the , an independent think tank.

Last updated 7:49 p.m., Mar. 3, 2025

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.

A federal judge ordered Hanover County Public Schools late Friday to temporarily cease blocking a transgender middle school student from trying out for and, if selected, playing on a sports team this school year.

In February, the student, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, filed a lawsuit claiming the school division violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

ACLU stated that the ruling found that the school board “likely violated” both when it banned the Hanover student from the tennis team.

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“This order is a reminder to school boards that protecting transgender young people is part of protecting girls’ sports,” said legal director Eden Heilman, in a statement. “And it’s a flashing red light to any Virginia school board that might be tempted to think that VDOE’s anti-trans model policies give it license to abuse its power. As the court reminded Hanover County School Board in its ruling, no state policies can shield Virginia schools from accountability for violating federal law.”

Last year, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration overhauled the model policies for transgender and nonbinary students designed under former Gov. Ralph Northam to protect the privacy and rights of such students.

In February, ACLU and Freshfields filed three lawsuits challenging the Virginia Department of Education on the policies that some schools have adopted.

In opposition to a student’s right to decide who finds out about their gender status out of fear of being bullied or harassed, the governor sided with parents’ rights, directing the administration to overhaul the policies.

The administration the policies to require parental approval for any changes to students’ “names, nicknames, and/or pronouns,” direct schools to keep parents “informed about their children’s well-being” and require that student participation in activities and athletics and use of bathrooms be based on sex, “except to the extent that federal law otherwise requires.”

Freshfields and ACLU filed the Hanover case in two courts, the Eastern District of Virginia and the Hanover County Circuit Court. The third lawsuit involving a York County student was in July. That suit claimed that at least one teacher had refused to address the student by her correct first name.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that the Hanover case is being heard separately in the federal and county courts. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on and .

Sen. Beth Mizell has once again authored , which would place the restriction on high school and college sports teams. Her bill advanced without objection from the Senate Education Committee Thursday.

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“We’re asking women to go sit down and let somebody take your place,” Mizell told the committee. “And win or lose, that line is in the sand.” 

The bill, which heads next to the full Senate, cited “men generally having denser and stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments, larger hearts, greater lung volume per body mass, a higher red blood cell count, and higher hemoglobin as well as higher natural levels of testosterone” as reasons that people born male have an unfair physical advantage over females in sports.

Allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports would be a violation of Title IX, a federal law approved 50 years ago that protects those in the education setting from discrimination on the basis of sex, according to the bill.

Opponents of last year’s bill, including Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, have said it could deter major sporting events from being held in Louisiana. Mizell countered that argument Thursday, saying 10 of the 15 states with transgender athlete bans have hosted NCAA championships.

Jennifer Marusak, a lobbyist and former student-athlete at Natchitoches Central High School and Northeast Louisiana University, brought her letterman’s jackets from each school to testify in support of Hewitt’s bill.

“If I’d been competing against birth males in high school or college, my name would not be in any record books at either of my schools, and my letter jacket wouldn’t look like this,” Marusak said, noting several championship patches on her high school coat.

Patricia Landeche, coach of the reigning 5A state champion girls’ basketball team at Ponchatoula High School, also spoke to the committee in favor of Mizell’s bill. She suggested competition options be made available to transgender athletes similar to intramural sports in higher education and for participants in Special Olympics.  

“Isn’t there some other solution for reaching an answer instead of infringing on the rights of a biological female athlete?” Landeche asked during her testimony.

There are no transgender athletes who compete on the high school or collegiate level in Louisiana, said SarahJane Guidry, executive director of Forum for Equality, an umbrella LGBTQ group in Louisiana. The Louisiana High School Athletics Association already bars them from participating in prep sports, she added.

Mizell’s bill isn’t a solution to any problem, Guidry said, but “providing lip service to a discussion about women in sports that really should be focused on funding and equality with men’s sports and not on exclusionary policies.”

When asked if he would veto the legislation like he did last year, Gov. John Bel Edwards said last week “I would hope it doesn’t reach my desk. If it does, I’ll see what it says and you’ll hear from me later on that one.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jarvis DeBerry for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .

Julia wouldn’t describe herself as the “biggest sports person” in the world. She’s not into basketball or football. She played soccer when she was little, but it didn’t stick as she got older.

What she’s really into are sports like cross country and track, which she feels are smaller in scale and more intimate. She trained with her dad, who used to run track in high school, and soon discovered she had a knack for it.

“He taught me the form and how to run, and I just fell in love with running hurdles because I was good at it, but also, it just gave me a feeling that you don’t really feel in a lot of other situations,” she said. It feels like putting life on pause for 20 seconds or so, she added, and “you only focus on what you’re doing and how to do it right.”

It’s this feeling Julia chases when she practices — but as a transgender athlete, she hasn’t been able to pursue it in competition. Because of statewide rules, she’s essentially barred from competing against other girls.

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“The government and think that I’m good because of how I was born, but really, I’m good because I know how to do the form, and I’m good because I practice my ass off,” said Julia, a transgender girl who attends high school in Central Texas and has requested to use a pseudonym and remain anonymous to protect her privacy. “Honestly, with the leadership that we have right now and who all is in charge and making the rules, I don’t think that I’m going to be able to run.”

Last year, the Texas Legislature passed , which requires that student athletes play on sports teams that correspond to the sex listed on their birth certificate, and the certificate athletes present must have been issued near the time of birth. The law went into effect Tuesday, making to enact similar legislation.

Supporters of the law argue it is necessary to State Rep. , R-Spring, said one of her main reasons for authoring the bill was to “protect girls’ safety.” She did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but , she hinted at introducing future legislation that would expand sports team restrictions to the college level.

“We have got to come back and protect our college girls in the next session,” she said.

HB 25 targets transgender youth, a rather small slice of the state’s population. , and it’s predicted the number of transgender youth is even smaller.

Nevertheless, legislation targeting trans people has been in recent years. Lt. Gov. said Tuesday that he was “especially proud” of the law.

“In Texas, we refuse to deny any woman or girl athlete the right to compete on a level playing field, and to be the best in their sport,” Patrick .

LGBTQ advocates say there’s been little evidence in the state of Texas to support the argument that transgender girls would displace cisgender girls on sports teams.

The transgender sports bill was part of a litany of anti-trans legislation introduced last year during Texas’ four legislative sessions that pushed and has led to on LGBTQ youth, said Ricardo Martinez, executive director of Equality Texas, a statewide advocacy organization for LGBTQ Texans.

“Lawmakers have willingly ignored the overwhelming harm that this bill and bills like it has already caused in favor of exploiting our differences and the lack of familiarity that some people may have about transgender people,” Martinez said. “This we know stokes fear, and it divides us.”

Advocates for transgender youth say they are bracing for the impact of the law’s implementation and the heightened scrutiny of transgender youth and their bodies. School districts have said they will abide by the law, but it’s still unclear how that will look in practice and how schools will determine whether a student’s birth certificate was issued near the time of birth.

Julia, 16, said she’s been able to practice with the girls team at her school during track season, but she doesn’t compete in meets. For her, the law means she has to face a “harsh truth” — competing in a sport she loves is something she just won’t be able to do.

“I wish I had that sort of idea in my head that this practice would all lead to something,” she said. “Now after actually realizing that this law is being put into place … all the practice that I’m going to be doing is going to lead up to nothing because I don’t have anywhere to show it off or anywhere to compete.”

Staying in compliance

Although some Republican lawmakers have said the new law codifies existing rules from the University Interscholastic League, the athletic governing body for public schools in Texas, the law goes further than previous UIL rules. UIL used to allow students to submit legally modified birth certificates, which students may have changed to align with their gender identity.

establishing that an athlete’s gender would be officially determined by their birth certificate. Under the new law, a modified birth certificate would only be accepted if it was changed to correct a clerical error.

Julia, who’s in the process of getting her gender marker changed on her birth certificate, said she had been optimistic that a new birth certificate would allow her to compete with other girls.

Jamey Harrison, deputy director of UIL, said school districts will be responsible for ensuring they are in compliance with the law, but it’s not completely clear whether they will be able to determine if a birth certificate is original.

“It’s new ground, so some of it will be learning as we go,” Harrison said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “But UIL does not have an investigative arm outside of its member school committees. We don’t have a bunch of black Suburbans and earpieces and guys going around checking birth certificates, that’s not the way it works. At the end of the day, the schools are going to have to do the best they can to make sure they’re in compliance with the law.”

Harrison said if districts don’t comply with the law, they will be subject to certain sanctions and will have to forfeit competition at a minimum.

The Tribune contacted some of the state’s largest school districts in major metro and surrounding areas to ask them about their plans to comply with the law. Several school districts did not respond to requests for comment, and a handful declined to be interviewed.

Deanne Hullender, a spokesperson with the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District, said it “will definitely be following all UIL guidelines and policies provided within this new legislation.” Meghan Cone, a spokesperson for Frisco ISD, said operations in her district are not expected to change because the bill “primarily codifies existing UIL regulation.”

Enforcement of laws similar to HB 25 have been halted in states like and as litigation battles over the statutes play out in court. A lawsuit in is also challenging that state’s version of the law.

Shelly Skeen, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, a national legal organization in support of civil rights for LGBTQ individuals, said the Texas law “certainly brings up questions about equal protection and civil rights.”

“If you’re going to treat one set of students differently than another, then you’re looking, at least in this case, [at] a violation of equal protection, but it’s also sex discrimination,” Skeen said.

According to the , current interpretation of Title IX — a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on the basis of sex in education — also encompasses gender identity and sexual orientation protections.

Andrea Segovia, senior policy and field strategist with the Transgender Education Network of Texas, said her organization is focusing on supporting transgender students as the law takes effect by making sure they are connected to mental health resources and helping educators find the best ways to be allies to LGBTQ youth.

“Unfortunately, we are at a point where it’s like a little bit of wait and see,” Segovia said about the law’s enforcement. “Because we know that UIL affects all public schools, but just like any other law in this state, it really depends on how they enforce it.”

Small group, big impact

Transgender people represent a small fraction of the state’s population, and the population of transgender youth ages 13 to 17 is estimated to be about 13,800, or about 0.7% of teens within that age range, . However, Texas is one of the states with the most transgender youths aside from California, Florida and New York.

Harrison said UIL doesn’t keep data on the number of K-12 transgender athletes that participate in school sports.

According to the Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, about . Transgender youth are less likely to compete compared with their lesbian, gay and bisexual peers, said Casey Pick, Trevor Project’s senior fellow for advocacy and government affairs.

“Many of these youth tell us that they didn’t participate in sports because of fear of harassment discrimination, so that is a reality,” Pick said. “But some of the youth who do participate tell us that it is their one source of relaxation, their place to find camaraderie and teamwork, that they have a lot of fun and sometimes it’s the place they feel best about their bodies and who they are.”

Another worry among opponents of the Texas law is the effect it could have on cisgender women who don’t subscribe to traditional interpretations of what a young girl or woman should look like.

Lis Riley, whose child is a cisgender girl who plays basketball in Austin ISD, said her daughter used to present herself as masculine before but has started to lean back into a feminine identity so she’s not targeted while participating in sports.

“‘I need to kind of look like a girl so people don’t look at me weird when I’m trying out for the girls basketball team,’ essentially is kind of what she’s telling me, which is kind of sad to feel like that’s the world of high school sports in a public school,” Riley said.

Meanwhile, student athletes like Julia are left with virtually no choices if they want to compete.

During the offseason, Julia said she’s been practicing by running around her neighborhood and sometimes going to her school’s track. Her coaches have applauded her talent, she said, but she’s made it clear to them that the only team she feels comfortable being a part of and competing with is the girls track team.

“I don’t see it as a ‘me’ problem. I see it as other people’s problem,” she said of the Texas law. “I kind of accepted that I’m not gonna be able to [compete]. I kind of just deal with it. I mean, it sucks, but that’s kind of the harsh reality.”

“” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

For LGBTQ mental health support, call the Trevor Project’s 24/7 at 866-488-7386. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the by calling 800-273-8255 or texting 741741.

Disclosure: Equality Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

The first push came from the president, who on his first day in office calling for federal agencies to root out discrimination based on gender identity and expression, including in public schools. In February, the administration also for litigation filed in Connecticut by a group of high school runners who argue that their rights under Title IX were violated by the state’s policy of allowing trans girls to race against them.

Republicans picked up the gauntlet happily, with introducing bills to require K-12 athletes to compete in the gender category that they were assigned to at birth. Governors in , , and have all signed such laws, which have also passed in at least one chamber of state legislatures in , , , and . After a split between Republicans in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem along the same lines.

Beneath the political stakes lie swiftly changing legal and cultural mores, which are themselves being reshaped by new discoveries on the biology of athletic performance. In all, the status of trans athletes — and particularly the question of whether trans females should be allowed to compete in the girls’ category in high school competitions — has been taken up by combatants on all sides of America’s ongoing debate over the politics of sex and gender. Meanwhile, as the fight moves from playing fields to legislative chambers and courtrooms, advocates are attempting to strike a compromise between the necessities of competitive fairness and inclusion.

That balance has begun to develop at the pinnacle of elite sport, with regulatory bodies like the and the reaching accommodations that allow trans women to participate under specific conditions — typically including measures to suppress their bodies’ production of testosterone, which is linked to performance attributes like speed, power, and endurance. But adolescence, when many trans children are still early in their social and physical transitions, is a far more ambiguous stage.

Joanna Harper, a sports researcher at England’s Loughborough University and herself a trans runner, observed that various proposals to address the issue for teenagers all come with downsides. In an interview, she set a goal of “being as inclusive as we can possibly be without destroying the competitive balance.”

“It’s so hard,” said Harper. “How do you tell a 15- or 16-year old that they have to go on hormone therapy to play sports? It’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to say, but for these very high-performing athletes, it does create a conundrum.”

To others, one consideration supersedes all others: the need to welcome trans children into all aspects of school life, including sports. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the executive director of the advocacy group GLSEN (previously known as the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), said that no claims around competitive fairness could justify treating trans students any different from their cisgender peers (i.e., those whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth).

“To use words from another civil rights fight, we know that anything separate is not equal. We know that when we start differentiating across lines of identity, young people will not be served by that.”

A ‘patchwork’ system

But according to Doriane Lambelet Coleman, sex differentiation is vital to the survival of women’s athletics. A professor at Duke Law School, Coleman is the co-director of the institution’s Center for Sports Law and Policy. She is also a former collegiate track champion who has worked in both American and international settings to develop anti-doping policies and rules determining eligibility for women’s competition.

Coleman that Title IX, which forbids sex-based discrimination across all federally funded educational programs, clearly mandates the segregation of athletes into categories according to sex-linked traits. Since its very purpose is to provide women and girls with the same access to athletic opportunity that boys have always enjoyed, forcing cisgender females to contend with rivals whose bodies lend them a competitive advantage effectively “[defeats] the purposes of the institution that is girls’ sport.”

“We need legislation that affirms the commitment to girl’s and women’s sport, and specifically to this set-aside of separate-sex teams on the basis of biological sex,” Coleman said. “It was never in doubt before that that’s what separate-sex sport meant, but now that it is questioned, we need to re-affirm that commitment.”

But Coleman also rejects the legal barriers being proposed and passed by Republicans, calling them overbroad. Some exceptions need to be drawn for trans girls and women who have undergone hormone treatment, or who transitioned before the onset of male puberty, she added.

The legislative push at the state level began almost exactly a year ago in Idaho, which flatly banned trans females from playing on girls’ teams at K-12 and post-secondary schools. In instances where doubt existed about an athlete’s biological sex, it would be resolved by an examination of “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels,” the text read. (The law was by a federal judge last summer, and litigation is still pending.)

As the legislation moves through statehouses around the country, students are facing an increasingly divided picture of athletic eligibility. , 16 mostly socially progressive states currently allow trans girls to compete in the category that matches their gender identity. Among the rest, some require they take medically prescribed hormone therapy, some require them to adhere to their natal sex, and some offer no recommendation.

Willingham-Jaggers referred to the sharp differences between different jurisdictions as a “patchwork” system that cries out for national clarification. In her view, that should come through the passage of the Equality Act, a federal bill that would amend existing civil rights law to prohibit discrimination in housing, education, and employment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. The Act in February, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already announced that it will be brought to the upper chamber for a vote.

Federal action is warranted because of the anxiety that trans students often feel about athletic participation, Willingham-Jaggers said. According to , over 10 percent of LGBT students feel discouraged from participating in sports because of their gender or sexual orientation. Forty-four percent of respondents said they avoided locker rooms because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable, 40 percent avoided gym or physical education classes, and 25 percent avoided athletic facilities.

“What happens when we discourage or intentionally exclude young people who are non-binary or transgender from sports [is that we] lock them out of all the positive effects that sports have on all young people — cis, trans, or non-binary,” Willingham-Jaggers said. “What is right for all students is also right for trans students.”

‘It’s no longer about sex’

Given the tiny margins Democrats now hold in Congress, neither the Equality Act nor any other federal legislation centered on trans youth looks likely to pass this session. While the possibility of regulatory reform still exists — the Justice Department recently stating that LGBT students would be protected under existing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex, including Title IX — policymakers and educators still face the question of how the rights of trans and cisgender girls can be reconciled when they come into conflict.

For some experts, hormone therapy is a necessary part of any solution, at least at the most competitive levels of women’s sport. In recognition of changing norms, leading regulatory bodies like the NCAA and International Olympic Committee have created policies that require trans females to undergo estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy before they can become eligible for women’s events.

Though she condemns the outright bans now under consideration in U.S. legislatures, calling them politically motivated, Loughborough University’s Harper said it was “perfectly reasonable” to place some restrictions on the participation of trans women in competitions.

As evidence, she cited the example of June Eastwood, a University of Montana runner who the first openly trans female to compete in a Division I cross-country meet. Eastwood completed the prescribed course of testosterone suppression during her transition, and generally proved a high-level if unspectacular performer in the women’s division. Had she not undergone the treatment, however, she might have easily dominated her sport; while running in the men’s category, Eastwood’s personal best in the 1500 meters was just a fraction of a second behind the women’s world record.

“Successful trans girls who have gone through male puberty, who have experienced all the gains that gives them and are good at their sport, will simply be too good, too successful in girls’ sports, unless you require them go through hormone therapy,” Harper said.

A less hypothetical case came during the 2016 Olympics, when all three medalists in the women’s 800 meters event were either known or suspected to have that produces both X and Y chromosomes in women. With testosterone levels that far exceed that of typical female athletes, those runners to undergo treatment to reduce their testosterone in order to enter women’s events between the quarter-mile and the mile.

But what is possible at elite levels of competition might not be workable in high school. Not all trans children have access to hormone therapies, and requiring them as a prerequisite for athletic participation could inadvertently distort students’ decisions around gender transition. To make things even more complicated, Republican legislators in several states bans on minors receiving “gender-affirming health care,” a treatment method that can recommend the use of puberty blockers and hormone replacement. In Arkansas, the first state to such a ban, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a veto on Monday only to the next day. If other states take the same approach, many transgender youth could be faced with a Catch-22 scenario: needing hormone therapy to compete in sports according to their gender identity, but being prohibited from receiving them.

All of it combines to make high school sports a particularly challenging space to adjudicate.

The best-known conflict within the realm of K-12 sports is now playing out in Connecticut, where have sued the state in federal court for permitting trans athletes to run track against cisgender girls. Between 2017 and 2019, those trans girls, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, combined to claim 15 state championship races. While former Attorney General William Barr formally backed the lawsuit, calling Connecticut’s policies “fundamentally unfair to female athletes,” the Justice Department under President Biden .

In part, the debate hinges on interpretations of Title IX, which was enacted nearly a half-century ago with the express purpose of in educational settings like sports. At the time of its establishment, school districts and universities directed their athletic budgets overwhelmingly toward male sports, and the concept of transgender identity was mostly outside the mainstream. By some estimates, participation in girls’ sport has increased by over 1,000 percent in the decades since. At the same time, the law permits “separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill.”

Duke’s Coleman sees the increasing social acceptance of LGBT communities as a positive development, but warns that it likely will also generate more such cases if states like Connecticut don’t carefully insulate the category of cisgender girls. Otherwise, she argued, it could drift into something like an open division freely entered not only by trans girls, but also gender-fluid and nonbinary competitors, and even trans boys who are actively taking testosterone but still permitted to compete against females.

“It’s no longer about sex; it’s not about sex-linked hormones; and it’s not even about gender identity, since trans boys can stay in,” Coleman said. “So I can’t even describe that group anymore. And if you can’t describe that group, who’s going to fund it? And if people continue to fund it, how will it stand legally? It no longer has integrity or a purpose that we can identify because you’ve let everybody in, essentially.”

Culture war fodder

Only a handful of states have so far restricted access to girl’s and women’s sports exclusively to natal females, and all are among the most Republican-leaning in the country. At the national level, Republican Senators and have both called for similar measures.

David Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College whose research focuses on U.S. political parties, said that the GOP seems to be coalescing around the proposal out of a recognition that LGBT acceptance remains “a controversial, uncomfortable issue for a lot of voters.”

“Republican politicians, who are increasingly oriented toward cultural as opposed to economic causes, have been looking for ways to translate the culture war into policy and legislation,” he continued. “So much of the culture war is actually not about what the government does, but here’s a case where it can be.”

While that much of President Biden’s agenda is reasonably popular, the polling also suggests an area of softness around the issue of trans athletes. According to a 2019 poll from Morning Consult, agreed that transgender women possessed an athletic edge over other women. , administered last month, found that 53 percent of registered voters supported a ban on trans athletes in women’s sports. Even among Democrats, just 42 percent of respondents said they would oppose such a ban, compared with 40 percent who would support it.

Aside from those figures, state-level Republicans are likely reading signs from former President Donald Trump, during his speech at February’s CPAC convention that “women’s sports as we know it [sic] will die” if restrictions aren’t adopted. In the same way that some lawmakers adopted Trump’s hatred of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, and are now its associated curriculum from use in public schools, they are now attaching themselves to another highly charged topic whose salience he has recently elevated.

But few if any elected Democrats have vocally opposed allowing trans women and girls to compete in sports according to their gender identity rather than their biological sex. Of the 16 states where official guidance recommends that course, all but one — Florida — has voted for the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections. This too reflects the partisan and geographic polarization at work, Hopkins argued.

“You don’t have a faction in the Democratic Party that’s pushing back against that,” he said. “They’re not worrying about carrying Senate races in South Dakota or Arkansas anymore because they’re out of the game in those states. That has really contributed to the culture war polarization between the two parties: Neither party is really trying to compete in the parts of the country that, culturally, are on the other side.”