The Division of Training on Friday referred a Title IX investigation into Maine faculties to the Justice Division after the state failed to succeed in a decision with the Trump administration over a discovering that it violated federal anti-discrimination regulation by permitting transgender college students to take part in women’ sports activities.
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” stated Craig Trainor, appearing assistant Training secretary for civil rights.
The Training Division in its announcement stated it should additionally provoke administrative proceedings to find out whether or not to terminate federal Ok-12 schooling funding for Maine’s state schooling division, together with system and discretionary grants.
“The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department,” Trainor stated. “Governor [Janet] Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom — be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
Each the Division of Training and the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS), which not too long ago started investigating faculties and states that permit transgender athletes to compete in women’ sports activities, stated in March that Maine had violated Title IX, the federal civil rights regulation towards intercourse discrimination that the Trump White Home says prohibits trans athletes from competing on women’ and girls’s groups.
The HHS investigation coated the Maine Division of Training, the Maine Principals’ Affiliation and Greely Excessive Faculty, a college of about 700 college students within the Portland suburbs. The Training Division’s findings utilized solely to the state schooling division.
Each businesses gave Maine officers till the tip of March to undertake insurance policies barring transgender college students from women’ sports activities. On the final day of the month, the Division of Training issued what it referred to as a “final warning” to Maine’s state schooling division, saying it will flip the investigation over to the Justice Division if the 2 entities didn’t come to an settlement by April 11.
A spokesperson for the state schooling division didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
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