Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi warned officers in Maine, California and Minnesota Tuesday to adjust to President Trump’s government orders to bar transgender athletes from taking part in ladies’ and ladies’s sports activities, promising swift authorized motion.
“This Department of Justice will hold accountable states and state entities that violate federal law,” Bondi wrote Tuesday in letters addressed to Maine Gov. Janet Mills, California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Government Director Ron Nocetti, Minnesota Legal professional Normal Keith Ellison and Erich Martens, government director of the Minnesota State Excessive Faculty League (MSHSL).
Officers in every of the states have mentioned state anti-discrimination legal guidelines defending transgender individuals forestall them from complying with Trump’s order, one among a number of the president has signed concentrating on trans Individuals since his return to workplace.
Trump sparred with Mills at a Nationwide Governors Affiliation session final week on the White Home over Maine’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from ladies’ and ladies’s sports activities. The earlier night, Trump instructed a gathering for the Republican Governor’s Affiliation that he would withhold federal funding from Maine if the state continued to disregard his order.
“See you in court,” Mills instructed Trump through the White Home occasion, responding to the president’s menace to the state’s funding.
Each the CIF and MSHSL have mentioned they may observe state legal guidelines that enable transgender college students to compete in sports activities in line with their gender id, and Ellison, in an opinion issued final week, mentioned Trump’s order violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based mostly on gender id.
Trump’s government order can not supersede state regulation, Ellison wrote, as a result of it lacks “the force and effect of law.” Government orders, which direct the federal authorities to implement legal guidelines, will not be legal guidelines in and of themselves.
Maine, California and Minnesota, amongst different states, are the themes of investigations launched by the Schooling Division into whether or not they violated Title IX — the federal civil rights regulation towards intercourse discrimination — by failing to adjust to Trump’s order. Officers for every state didn’t return a request for remark.
In a information launch on Tuesday, Bondi mentioned the Justice Division “does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law.”
“We will leverage every legal option necessary to ensure state compliance with federal law and President Trump’s executive order protecting women’s sports,” she mentioned.
Bondi wrote within the letters that, as a result of Title IX is a federal regulation, it doesn’t matter if “state law allows, or even requires, state athletic associations or other similar entities to require girls to compete against boys in sports and athletic events. Where federal and state law conflict, states and state entities are required to follow federal law.”
Bondi’s letters, as with different Trump White Home writings, don’t use the phrase transgender regardless of talking about trans people immediately.
If any of the states are discovered to have violated Title IX, Bondi wrote within the letters, “the Department of Justice stands ready to take all appropriate action to enforce federal law.”
“I hope that it does not come to this,” she wrote. “The Department of Justice does not want to have to sue states or state entities, or to seek termination of their federal funds. We only want states and state entities to comply with the law. And federal law requires giving girls an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by ensuring that girls need to compete only with other girls, not with boys.”
