After the U.S. Department of Justice sued Maine for putting women and girls at risk by allowing males to compete in their sports, the state’s attorney general claimed — with zero evidence — that Maine’s ideology poses “no concerns of safety.”
“There are no concerns about individuals who are just choosing which gender they want to give themself in order to participate,” Democrat Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said in an interview with CNN. “So that, that too is really after a lot of work on whether or not there’s any issue here that warrants this intrusion by the federal government into what’s going on in Maine schools.”
Frey was on CNN to defend his state’s refusal to comply with Title IX federal civil rights law by continuing to allow men to compete against women. His appearance came after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a civil lawsuit against Maine for its noncompliance in the wake of multiple federal agencies trying to get the state to stop putting women and girls at risk for weeks.
“We’ve been working through to understand what, if any problem, really exists with the participation, if some of the harms that are being alleged really are of some concern, and what we’ve identified is, there really is — there are no concerns of safety,” Frey told CNN.
Frey either has no clue what he is talking about or is lying through his teeth, because it is not hard to find instances of serious injuries to women and girls at the hands of the biologically stronger and larger males they are forced to compete against.
Take Payton McNabb, for instance. She was invited as one of President Donald Trump’s guests to his address to a joint session of Congress earlier this year because she suffered a concussion, brain bleed, and other trauma when a male athlete spiked a volleyball violently directly into her face. She still has issues with vision, partial paralysis, and mental health concerns associated with such injuries.
A Massachusetts girls’ basketball team had to forfeit after a male on the opposing team kept injuring players “basically, all game,” according to the account of the athletic director of the forfeiting team.
Numerous sports leagues have issued statements and regulations barring men from competing against women expressly because of the physical danger presented to women in competition.
The United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, also expressed concern about the likelihood of violence from the Biden administration’s Title IX rewrite that would allow men in women’s sports across the board. Not only is there concern for physical harm in competition, but trans policies also create the opportunity for violence when females are forced to share restrooms and locker rooms with males, or sleep in the same room with them during overnight team trips.
In Bondi’s lawsuit announcement on Wednesday, she acknowledged the injuries, saying, “Some of these young women have endured vicious injuries, too, as a result of boys playing in their sports.”
“These boys are allowed to go in women’s restrooms, they are allowed to go in the women’s dressing rooms and get fully naked and change — biological boys — and change clothes in front of these young women,” she said. “Maine’s leadership has refused to comply at every turn, so now, we have no other choice: We are taking them to court.”
Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine, who has been obstinate in her quest to ensure the highest amount of harm comes to women and girls within the scope of Title IX, issued a statement in response to the lawsuit, saying in part, “This matter has never been about school sports or the protection of women and girls, as has been claimed, it is about states rights and defending the rule of law against a federal government bent on imposing its will, instead of upholding the law.”
Maine has been claiming that the right to allow men in women’s sports is fully in line with Title IX, despite the fact that the law was expressly passed to protect women’s opportunities in education and sports. The federal government, which enforces Title IX, as well as federal courts, have also made clear that Maine’s queer theory understanding of Title IX is far afield from what the law means.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
