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The U.S. Division of Schooling mentioned it’s transferring to strip federal Okay-12 training funding from Maine as a consequence of what it referred to as the state’s refusal to adjust to Title IX, the legislation that bans intercourse discrimination in training.
The Friday announcement adopted a division investigation into the state’s insurance policies governing transgender athletes. These investigations decided that the state was in violation of Title IX, which the state has denied.
“The Division has given Maine each alternative to return into compliance with Title IX, however the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to take action, selecting as a substitute to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their college students’ security, privateness, and dignity,” the division mentioned in an announcement asserting the transfer.
The transfer represents an unprecedented try by the federal authorities to speedily take away Okay-12 funding that has been appropriated by Congress and is firmly grounded in federal legislation. President Donald Trump has made trans athletes a significant political subject and has used the federal authorities to root out gender-affirming insurance policies within the early days of his second time period.
The federal Schooling Division mentioned it’s beginning an administrative continuing to remove Maine’s Okay-12 funding, together with components grants — which embrace funding streams like Title I for high-poverty faculties and IDEA grants for college students with disabilities — in addition to discretionary grants. Maine’s state training division has spent practically $400 million in federal funding on elementary and secondary training lately, the Maine Monitor reported. As well as, the federal division mentioned it has referred the outcomes of its Title IX investigation to the U.S. Division of Justice for “additional enforcement motion.”
The Division of Well being and Human Companies had already referred its investigation that discovered Maine in violation of Title IX to the Justice Division.
Earlier on Friday, the Maine state lawyer basic’s workplace informed the federal Schooling Division that the state wouldn’t signal a decision settlement drafted by the Trump administration within the wake of the investigation. That proposed settlement options a number of pages of calls for, together with that Maine should strip any trans woman who’s ever positioned in a Maine women sports activities competitors of her title and provides it to the athlete behind her, together with an apology letter.
The federal Schooling Division didn’t instantly reply to a number of questions from Chalkbeat.
Andrew Ujifusa is a narrative editor at Chalkbeat.
