The lawsuit sets the stage for the DOJ to make its first attempt in court to enforce Trump’s interpretation of Title IX at the state level, though Attorney General Pam Bondi warned at a press conference last month that she planned to target other resistant states with similar litigation, including California and Minnesota.

The Biden administration had reinterpreted Title IX to include gender identity as a protected class in education-related settings, but Trump reversed this through executive orders upon taking office.

In the Maine case, a judge on Thursday also set court deadlines and a tentative trial start date of Dec. 3.

The DOJ alleged as part of its lawsuit that a male pole vaulter who identifies as transgender won a girls state competition in February 2025 and that the transgender athlete plans to continue participating in high school sports for girls in violation of Title IX.

Maine attorneys denied all claims related to the athlete, saying the state’s Department of Education “is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations … and therefore denies same.”

The attorneys also said they reject the claim that the phrase “‘all girl competitors’ suggests that a transgender girl is not a ‘girl competitor.’”

The DOJ’s lawsuit referenced Trump’s executive orders on gender identity, including one called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which defined the term “sex” in Title IX to mean strictly “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”

BONDI ANNOUNCES DOJ LAWSUIT AGAINST MAINE OVER TRANSGENDER SPORTS DISPUTE

Maine attorneys said that executive orders cannot “‘confirm’ what an undefined term in a Federal statute means.”