Minnesota is warring with the Trump administration over the government’s threat to pull federal funding if the state doesn’t listen to its guidelines on transgender athletes.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday over the funding threat and the administration’s executive orders on transgender people.
“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the Trump administration to sue Minnesota,” Ellison said Tuesday at the state Capitol in St. Paul. “Today, Minnesota is suing him and his administration because we will not participate in this shameful bullying.”
Bondi warned states in a February letter to adhere to Trump’s order barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports or face legal action. “This Department of Justice will hold accountable states and state entities that violate federal law,” she wrote.
The U.S. attorney general said last week while announcing her noncompliance case against Maine that California and Minnesota are the “top two” states that should also “be on notice.”
The Trump administration has argued that Title IX, a law preventing sex discrimination, doesn’t allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. Ellison disputed the argument and said the executive orders pointed against transgender people violate the U.S. Constitution and Title IX.
“The administration is wrong about the law,” he said.
Ellison wrote in a February opinion in response to an inquiry from the Minnesota State High School League that the president’s “Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports” executive order “does not have the force of law and therefore does not preempt any aspect of Minnesota law.”
He said that complying with the order would violate the state’s Minnesota Human Rights Act, which protects people from discrimination based on gender identity. He wrote that he found “complying with the Executive Order and prohibiting students from participation in extracurricular activities consistent with their gender identity would violate the MHRA.”
Ellison added that letters sent to the state by Justice Department Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon ordering the state to ban transgender athletes from sports violate the Administrative Procedure Act because they are “arbitrary and capricious” and conflict with Title IX.
“They want to make all of us pay because we welcome all children and want them to be their whole selves,” Ellison said during a Tuesday news conference. “These are bullying tactics, plain and simple. I’ve been around my share of bullies in my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t give them an inch.”
An openly transgender state lawmaker, Minnesota’s first, also spoke at the news conference. “Here, we do not bend to cruelty,” Democratic Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke said. “We do not bow to bullying or bigotry. We lead with love and follow the law. We will continue to build a state that honors and affirms the lives of all. We have chosen love, we have chosen justice, and we continue to choose freedom, now and always.”
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The Trump administration was likely to sue Minnesota over defying the executive order anyways, as it did with Maine following Trump’s public feud with Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME). Bondi said the transgender athlete issue is a priority for the administration.
“President Trump, before he was elected, this has been a huge issue for him,” Bondi said last week. “Pretty simple: girls play in girls’ sports, boys play in boys’ sports. Men play in men’s sports, women play in women’s sports.”
