Trump administration sues Minnesota for allowing trans athletes in girls’ sports

The US Department of Justice sued Minnesota’s education department and the state’s school athletics body on Monday for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.In a lawsuit, the justice department claims that by making female student athletes compete against transgender girls, as well as share locker rooms and bathrooms with them, Minnesota is violating Title IX – the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination for any programs that receive federal funding.“Minnesota’s policies and practices create unfair competition, deny girls equal educational opportunities, and expose girls to a hostile educational environment with heightened risks of physical injury and psychological harm,” the justice department argues in the suit filed on Monday.Minnesota has fought against the Trump administration’s efforts to remove transgender athletes from girls’ sports.The state filed a lawsuit last year over Trump administration orders to recognize only two genders. The administration warned the state last September that laws allowing transgender athletes violated Title IX, but the state has not relented. Minnesota is considered a “trans refuge” state for its policies that recognize and support transgender people.The lawsuit is one of several Minnesota faces from the Trump administration, which has made the midwestern state a focus in his retribution campaign. The administration has threatened to withhold billions in federal education funds if Minnesota doesn’t disallow transgender involvement in girls’ sports.Keith Ellison, the state’s Democratic attorney general, called the Title IX lawsuit a “sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months” and said he will continue to fight against the Trump administration “to stop them from bullying vulnerable children in Minnesota”.“Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight,” Ellison said in a statement. “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.”There are currently 27 states that restrict transgender athletes from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, according to the Williams Institute.