Feds say Minnesota’s trans athlete policy violates civil rights law
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The Trump administration on Tuesday said it concluded that a Minnesota policy letting transgender student athletes compete on teams consistent with their gender identity is a civil rights violation.
Federal officials immediately warned Minnesota to end its policy within 10 days or risk losing federal education aid. The issue, however, seems likely to be settled eventually in court.
The Minnesota High School League’s policy on transgender athletes has operated for more than a decade with little controversy. Following President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this year effectively barring transgender athletes from female sports, league officials signaled it would stay in place.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison backed the high school league’s position, arguing that Minnesota’s human rights law lets transgender athletes compete in sports consistent with their gender identity and that the state law supersedes Trump’s executive order. In March, Minnesota lawmakers rejected an effort to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.
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In a statement Tuesday, Craig Trainor, the U.S. Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said Minnesota was guilty of sacrificing “the safety, fair treatment and dignity of its female students to appease the false idols of radical gender ideology.”
Federal officials, he said, determined that trans athletes had competed on girls softball, lacrosse, volleyball, Alpine ski, Nordic ski and track and field teams in Minnesota.
Beyond rescinding the high school league policy, Trainor’s office also called on Minnesota to keep transgender athletes out of female locker rooms, apologize to female athletes and reinstate titles and records to female athletes who competed in categories with trans athletes.
The high school league did not immediately respond to questions from MPR News about the federal findings. The state education department said it was “reviewing the letter” and that it remained “committed to ensuring every child has the opportunity to thrive in a safe and supportive school community.”
‘Targeting schools’
Jessica Heiser is a Minnesota-based lawyer who has spent more than 13 years working on civil law issues in education, including time spent working at the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. She said the way the Trump administration’s Education Department is using the Office of Civil Rights is a radical change from more than 40 years of precedent.
“The word that best describes this is ‘extraordinary,’” Heiser said. “Instead of waiting for student complaints, this administration is targeting schools, they're going out and finding cases that are in the news — especially if it's a transgender policy [and] aligns with the administration’s values … This [is a] total departure from how civil rights has been enforced in this country for many, many, many years.
Heiser said clients she works with have given up trying to get the Trump administration’s education department to investigate civil rights issues in schools — including violations of disability rights and sexual harassment in schools.
“They won't even take them to OCR (Office of Human Rights) at this point,” Heiser said. “There's this feeling that the administration is only going to do what it wants to do, and it's a moot point whether you even go to them to enforce … things that are outside of their priorities, because they just won't enforce them, on top of which they've, like, gutted the department, so there's only a couple people left.”
The Department of Education this year laid off more than 1,000 of its employees, including hundreds of staff in its Office of Civil Rights, a decision a federal appeals court this week said it would allow.
