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The Trump administration on Monday moved toward stripping federal funding from Minnesota by referring its investigation into alleged Title IX violations involving transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports to the Department of Justice for enforcement.
The civil rights offices at the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services said the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League have refused to comply with Title IX requirements by “allowing men to compete in women’s sports and occupy women’s intimate facilities.”
“Despite repeated opportunities to comply with Title IX, Minnesota has chosen defiance — continuing to jeopardize the safety of women and girls, deny them fair competition, and erode their right to equal access in educational programs and activities,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.
McMahon also linked the referral to broader criticism of state leadership. “As Minnesota reels from a massive fraud scandal exposing Gov. Tim Walz’s dereliction of duty, today’s referral to DOJ underscores the state’s ongoing failure to safeguard its citizens and uphold the rule of law,” she said.
A joint federal investigation concluded in September that both the state education department and the high school sports league violated Title IX’s ban on sex discrimination by permitting males to compete in multiple female sports programs and use female-only locker rooms and facilities. Investigators offered Minnesota a proposed resolution agreement that would have allowed the state to voluntarily resolve the findings.
The Education Department said Minnesota indicated in December that it would neither accept the agreement nor negotiate its terms. Since then, federal officials say the state has taken no action to address the violations.
“Minnesota is violating Title IX, and we will not look the other way,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “When states allow males to compete in girls’ sports, they deny young women and girls the protections the law guarantees.”
The referral follows a February executive order signed by President Donald Trump directing federal agencies to enforce Title IX protections based on biological sex. The order authorizes agencies to review and, if necessary, withhold federal funding from schools and programs found to be out of compliance.