The Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Education informed Maine officials Wednesday that the state is in violation of the federal law known as Title IX for allowing transgender girls to compete in high school athletics.

The notice came just two days after another federal agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, amended its notice of violation of Title IX aimed at the Maine Department of Education to include both the Maine Principals’ Association, the independent organization that governs high school athletics, and Greely High School in Cumberland.

In both notices of violation, the Trump administration has proposed corrective action and has given the state 10 days to comply or face the prospect of losing funds.

“The outcome of (the Office of Civil Rights’) investigation of (Maine’s Department of Education) confirms that it has violated federal antidiscrimination law by allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports and boys to occupy girls’ intimate facilities,” federal DOE Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement Wednesday. “If Maine does not swiftly and completely come into compliance with Title IX, we will initiate the process to limit MDOE’s access to federal funding.”

Maine receives more than $280 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education for various programs, including special education.

Meanwhile, the Maine Principals’ Association, which was named in the other notice of violation from the U.S. DHHS’s Office of Civil Rights, is challenging the Trump administration’s finding. In a letter Tuesday, an attorney for the association said the organization receives no federal funding of any kind.

“So is it not beholden to Title IX enforcement USHHS and therefore cannot be included in any future investigations or litigation,” said Jared Bornstein, a spokesperson for the MPA.

MULTIPLE INVESTIGATIONS

The Trump administration has been aggressively targeting Maine ever since a Feb. 21 meeting of governors at the White House that featured a testy exchange between President Donald Trump and Gov. Janet Mills.

Trump signed an executive order in early February banning competition in women’s and girls’ sports to anyone not assigned female at birth. Most states moved to comply with that order, and Trump told Mills that he’d withhold federal funds if Maine didn’t. Mills, however, maintained that his order conflicted with the Maine Human Rights Act and said “see you in court.”

The same day that Mills challenged Trump, his administration launched two investigations alleging that the state was violating Title IX, the longstanding law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs that receive federal funding.

Four days later, on Feb. 25, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in a letter that it had found the Maine Department of Education to be in violation of Title IX. Most similar investigations take months or more, and no state officials were interviewed or asked to provide any evidence. Gov. Mills has said the outcome was “predetermined.”

The federal agency issued an amended notice Monday saying the MPA and Greely High School are also in violation of Title IX. The department cited a transgender Greely student’s win at an indoor track championship this winter, as well as a report of a different transgender student from the Maine Coast Waldorf School competing in a girls Nordic skiing race last month.

The Trump administration proposed a resolution agreement and said in its notice that Greely, the Maine Department of Education and the MPA have 10 days from the notice, dated Monday, to “comply with the regulation and to take such corrective action as may be appropriate.”

A copy of the proposed agreement, obtained from the Office of the Maine Attorney General, calls for the Maine DOE to work with the principals’ association to rescind MPA’s current policy allowing transgender students to compete in girls sports. If the principals’ association does not rescind its policy, the agreement asks the Maine DOE to prohibit public schools from participating in events organized and administered by the MPA and to ban the MPA from using public school facilities to host their events.

‘APPROPRIATE ACTION’

The Trump administration also is asking Maine to give back $99,940 that the state’s Education Department received from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $87,000 from the Administration for Children and Families.

If the agreement is not signed, the federal DHHS said in a news release, Maine would “risk referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for appropriate action.”

Wednesday’s letter from the U.S. Department of Education to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin had similar language. It also included a series of steps Maine would need to take to come into compliance. They include forbidding school districts from “allowing males to participate in any athletic program, or access any locker room or bathroom, designated for females and that meaning of words such as ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are to be understood ‘in the context of the facts that there are only two sexes.'”

It also calls on Maine to “restore to individual female athletes all individual recognitions such girls or women would have earned but for the recognitions being given to males who participated in girls’ competitions,” and to send letters of apologies to those athletes.

Legal experts have said that the administration’s executive order and its belief that Maine is in violation of Title IX rely on a narrower definition of sex discrimination as being based only on biological sex. It’s also an argument that has yet to be tested in courts.

MAINE REVIEWING RESPONSES

A spokesperson for the Maine attorney general’s office said Wednesday that state officials are still reviewing the Trump administration’s proposed agreements.

Jeff Porter, the superintendent for School Administrative District 51, which includes Greely High School, also said in an email Wednesday that the district is “still working this through with legal counsel at the time.” But he also said SAD 51 receives no funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Bornstein, the Maine Principals’ Association spokesperson, said the organization believes that any solution to the dispute should come from lawmakers.

“This issue is a policy question that should be decided by the Maine Legislature and by Congress,” he said. “MPA’s only desire is to follow the law, which right now our legal counsel advises is the Maine Human Rights Act. We look forward to our elected leaders answering these important questions.”

The Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Agriculture also had launched a separate Title IX investigation against the University of Maine System shortly after the president and Mills went head to head. The circumstances of that investigation have not been clear, as UMaine officials have maintained that the system already complies with Title IX and that no transgender athletes were competing on any of the system’s campuses.

On Wednesday, the USDA sent out a news release saying it was satisfied with the UMaine system’s policy and that its schools would be able to access federal funds going forward.

“The University of Maine System has always maintained its compliance with State and Federal laws and with NCAA rules,” system Chancellor Dannel Malloy said in a statement. “We are relieved to put the Department’s Title IX compliance review behind us.”

This story was corrected Wednesday, April 2, to clarify which programs the U.S. Department of Education funds.