Attorney General Pam Bondi warned officials in Maine, California and Minnesota Tuesday to comply with President Trump’s executive orders to bar transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, promising swift legal action.
“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) Executive Director Ron Nocetti, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Erich Martens, executive director of the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL).
Officials in each of the states have said state anti-discrimination laws protecting transgender people prevent them from complying with Trump’s order, one of several the president has signed targeting trans Americans since his return to office.
Trump sparred with Mills at a National Governors Association session last week at the White House over Maine’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. The previous evening, Trump told a meeting for the Republican Governor’s Association that he would withhold federal funding from Maine if the state continued to ignore his order.
“See you in court,” Mills told Trump during the White House event, responding to the president’s threat to the state’s funding.
Both the CIF and MSHSL have said they will follow state laws that allow transgender students to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity, and Ellison, in an opinion issued last week, said Trump’s order violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.
Trump’s executive order cannot supersede state law, Ellison wrote, because it lacks “the force and effect of law.” Executive orders, which direct the federal government to enforce laws, are not laws in and of themselves.
Maine, California and Minnesota, among other states, are the subjects of investigations launched by the Education Department into whether they violated Title IX — the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination — by failing to comply with Trump’s order. Officials for each state did not return a request for comment.
In a news release on Tuesday, Bondi said the Justice Department “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 said.
Bondi wrote in the letters that, because Title IX is a federal law, it does not 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 other Trump White House writings, do not use the word transgender despite speaking about trans individuals directly.
If any of the states are found to have violated Title IX, Bondi wrote in 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.”
