The Trump administration sued Minnesota and its college athletics governing physique on Monday, finishing up a risk to punish the state for permitting transgender athletes to compete in girls sports.
The lawsuit is a part of a broader battle over the rights of transgender youth. More than two dozen states have legal guidelines prohibiting transgender girls and girls from taking part in sure sports and a few have barred gender-affirming surgical procedures for minors. Courts have blocked a few of these insurance policies.
In the lawsuit filed Monday, the Justice Department alleges the state Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League are violating Title IX, a federal legislation in opposition to intercourse discrimination in academic packages that obtain federal cash.
“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi mentioned in a press release.
Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison referred to as the lawsuit “a sad attempt to get attention” over a difficulty that has already been in litigation for months. He mentioned he’ll preserve preventing.
“It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address,” Ellison mentioned in a press release.
League officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The administration has filed related lawsuits in opposition to Maine and California, and has threatened the federal funding of some universities over transgender athletes, together with San Jose State in California and the University of Pennsylvania.
Minnesota officers have lengthy resisted the federal push to ban trans athletes from girls sports. Ellison filed a preemptive lawsuit final April, saying Minnesota’s human rights act supersedes govt orders issued by President Donald Trump final 12 months. The lawsuit additionally says the state is already in compliance with Title IX. A ruling is pending on the federal authorities’s movement to dismiss that case.
The Justice Department mentioned in a press release that Minnesota violates Title IX “by requiring girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions that are designated exclusively for girls and allowing boys to invade intimate spaces designated exclusively for girls, such as multi-person locker rooms and bathrooms.”
To buttress its claims that trans athletes have an unfair benefit, the lawsuit highlights the case of a trans pitcher on the Champlin Park High School girls varsity fastpitch softball group who helped lead the varsity to a 6-0 victory in a state championship sport in 2025.
The Trump administration additionally reversed the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which held that its provisions prohibiting discrimination on the premise of intercourse additionally prolonged to gender identification.
According to the Justice Department, Minnesota’s Department of Education receives greater than $3 billion yearly in federal funding from the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. It says that funding is contingent on compliance with Title IX.
The lawsuit asks a federal courtroom in Minnesota to declare the state in violation of Title IX and order it to ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ prep sports.
The civil rights workplaces on the Education and Health and Human Services put the state and league on discover final September that they confronted authorized motion in the event that they didn’t cease violating the federal legislation.