{"id":11622,"date":"2026-03-30T23:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T23:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/11622\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T23:10:10","slug":"justice-department-targets-minnesota-in-transgender-athletes-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/11622\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department targets Minnesota in transgender athletes lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration sued Minnesota and its school athletics governing body on Monday, carrying out a threat<\/a> to punish the state for allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls sports.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit is part of a broader fight over the rights of transgender youth<\/a>. More than two dozen states have laws prohibiting transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports and some have barred gender-affirming surgeries for minors. Courts have blocked some of those policies.<\/p>\n

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> a federal law against sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal money. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,\u201d Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the lawsuit \u201ca sad attempt to get attention\u201d over an issue that has already been in litigation for months. He said he\u2019ll keep fighting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Ellison said in a statement. <\/p>\n

The League does not comment on threatened or pending lawsuits, spokesman Tim Leighton said.<\/p>\n

The administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine<\/a> and California,<\/a> and has threatened the federal funding of some universities<\/a> over transgender athletes, including San Jose State in California and the University of Pennsylvania.<\/a><\/p>\n

Minnesota officials have long resisted the federal push to ban trans athletes<\/a> from girls sports. Ellison filed a preemptive lawsuit<\/a> last April, saying Minnesota\u2019s human rights act supersedes executive orders<\/a> issued by President Donald Trump last year. The lawsuit also says the state is already in compliance with Title IX. A ruling is pending on the federal government\u2019s motion to dismiss that case.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department said in a statement that Minnesota violates Title IX \u201cby 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

To buttress its claims that trans athletes have an unfair advantage, the lawsuit highlights the case of a trans pitcher on the Champlin Park High School girls varsity fastpitch softball team who helped lead the school to a 6-0 victory in a state championship game in 2025.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration also reversed the Biden administration\u2019s interpretation of Title IX, which held that its provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex also extended to gender identity.<\/p>\n

According to the Justice Department, Minnesota\u2019s Department of Education receives more than $3 billion annually 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.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit asks a federal court in Minnesota to declare the state in violation of Title IX and order it to prohibit transgender girls from competing in girls\u2019 prep sports.<\/p>\n

The civil rights offices at the Education and Health and Human Services put the state and league on notice<\/a> last September that they faced legal action if they didn\u2019t stop violating the federal law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration sued Minnesota and its school athletics governing body on Monday, carrying out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[55,7254,38,933,8105,68,6269,50,595,8,8103,169,2635,57,158,1152,163,9,8106,67,1199,8107,7,2631,54,13,100,8104],"class_list":{"0":"post-11622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-discrimination","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-education-funding","13":"tag-gender","14":"tag-gender-in-sports","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-government-policy","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-keith-ellison","19":"tag-lawsuits","20":"tag-legal-proceedings","21":"tag-lgbtq","22":"tag-minnesota","23":"tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","24":"tag-mn-state-wire","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-pamela-bondi","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-tim-leighton","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","32":"tag-u-s-news","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-united-states-government","35":"tag-youth-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116320653971075992","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}