March 31 (UPI) — The Justice Department is suing the Minnesota Department of Education, asking a federal court to force it to comply with the Trump administration’s policies prohibiting transgender student-athletes from competing in girls’ sports.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, is the latest in a broad series of federal actions — including lawsuits, investigations, funding measures and an immigration-enforcement surge — the Trump administration has taken against the Democratic-led state headed by Gov. Tim Walz, a frequent President Donald Trump target.
Federal prosecutors are asking the court to rule that the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League are violating Title IX’s prohibition on sex-based discrimination over their policies allowing transgender student-athletes at federally funded schools to compete in girls’ sports and use spaces designated for girls, such as bathrooms and changing rooms.
“This DOJ acknowledges biological reality and we refuse to let high school girls be subjected to this treatment,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on X announcing the lawsuit.
“It’s not only unfair — it’s deeply inappropriate and dangerous.”
Several major medical and civil-rights organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support allowing transgender athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity, saying bans harm their mental and physical health and amount to discrimination.
Republicans and conservatives have for years sought to implement policies restricting transgender rights. Trump, who campaigned on rolling back protections for transgender Americans, signed an executive order Feb. 5, 2025, making it U.S. policy “to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports,” and directing the Education Department, in coordination with the attorney general, to expedite enforcement.
The lawsuit filed Monday comes after the Education Department and the Department of Health and Services determined they could not secure Minnesota’s voluntarily compliance, and referred the matter to the Justice Department.
“We. will not allow girls too be denied equal opportunity and basic privacy,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “Title IX is clear: schools that accept federal funding must protect the rights, safety and dignity of female students.”
The 45-page lawsuit argues that the state’s policies and practices “create unfair competition, deny girls equal educational opportunities and expose girls to a hostile educational environment with heightened risks of physical and psychological harm.”
“The undeniable physiological differences between male and female athletes provide boys with inherent advantages in strength, speed and physicality that predetermine the outcome of athletic contests,” federal prosecutors said in the lawsuit.
“These differences are precisely why Title IX and its implementing regulations … permit and encourage sex-separated sports to ensure girls have an equal opportunity to participate in, excel at and reap educational benefits of athletics.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison described the lawsuit as “a sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months.”
Ellison sued the Trump administration in April 2025, challenging Trump’s executive orders in response to its threats to revoke federal funding from Minnesota over transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports. The litigation is still pending.
“Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight,” Ellison said in a statement to media.
“It 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.”
Ellison said he will continue to fight the Trump administration to “stop them from bullying vulnerable children in Minnesota.”
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