April 7, 2025 – Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced she was pausing some USDA funding that flows to the Maine Department of Education based on violations of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex.
The news came after a series of executive orders signed by President Trump that define sex and gender so that schools that allow transgender female athletes to participate in women’s sports are in violation of Title IX. “In order to continue to receive taxpayer dollars from USDA, the state of Maine must demonstrate compliance with Title IX, which protects female student athletes from having to compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males,” Rollins wrote in a letter. The National Collegiate Athletic Association estimates less than a tenth of 1 percent of college athletes are transgender.
In response, Maine today filed a lawsuit against the USDA. “Under the banner of keeping children safe, the Trump Administration is illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed,” Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said in a statement. “This is just another example where no law or consequence appears to restrain the administration as it seeks capitulation to its lawlessness. The President and his Cabinet secretaries do not make the law and they are not above the law, and this action is necessary to remind the President that Maine will not be bullied into violating the law.”
In the statement, Frey said that the Child Nutrition Program of the Maine Department of Education was “unable to access several sources of federal funding, all of which are necessary to feed children and vulnerable adults.” That’s despite the fact that Rollins, in her letter, said school meals would not be affected but that funding for “certain administrative and technological functions in schools” would be withheld. “This is only the beginning,” she said, “though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”
The USDA did not respond to a question from Civil Eats asking for details on what other kind of funding the agency, which oversees food and agriculture, would withhold from a state education department.
This is not the only such dispute: Earlier this year, the agency initiated a Title IX compliance review of the University of Maine. In March, it announced the university system complied with the orders on keeping transgender athletes out of women’s sports and as a result “has been able to access all federal funds from USDA.” Then, at the end of March, Rollins sent a letter to California governor Gavin Newsom initiating a similar review of USDA funding that flows to California’s Department of Education, this time related to a state law that stops schools from requiring teachers to notify parents of their children’s gender identity.
In her letter, Rollins said she is assisting the U.S. Department of Education in investigating whether that law violates the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The USDA also did not respond to a question asking for details on what the agency’s role in that investigation would be, given the issue is not related to food or agriculture. In the meantime, California’s state superintendent said it would defend the state law, which he said protects the rights of LGBTQ+ students. (Link to this post.)
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