Justice Department sues to stop transgender athletes in Minnesota school sports

The Trump administration opened a new front in its legal war against Minnesota with a lawsuit Monday challenging the state’s policies that allow biological boys who identify as girls to compete in girls’ sports and to “invade” girls’ locker rooms.

Justice Department officials said the state’s policies amounted to “unapologetic sex discrimination” against female athletes, denying them athletic opportunities and exposing them to increased risk of injuries.

The result, the feds said, was a “hostile educational environment” in violation of Title IX of civil rights law.

“The Trump Administration does not tolerate flawed state policies that ignore biological reality and unfairly undermine girls on the playing field,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in announcing the lawsuit.

Minnesota has become a thorn in President Trump’s side, with complaints about social-welfare fraud and leniency toward illegal immigrants topping the president’s problems with the Democrat-dominated state.

Gov. Tim Walz was the running mate for Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison downplayed the lawsuit, calling it a federal attempt at “bullying” and saying he’d already taken the same issue to court last year.

“This new suit is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months,” he said.

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He cast the lawsuit as a distraction from mounting problems for Mr. Trump, including the war in Iran, rising gas prices and persistent questions about his mass deportation push, the last go which had Minnesota at ground zero for months.

“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,” Mr. Ellison said.

Underpinning the new lawsuit are the athletic disparities between boys and girls.

The federal government said Minnesota recognizes those — that’s why it has separate boys’ and girls’ leagues for many sports, and girls-only leagues for softball, gymnastics and badminton, at least at seventh grade and above.

Girls have been allowed to try out for boys’ teams, but boys generally cannot try out for girls’ teams. 

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State law creates a specific exception, however, based on gender identity, allowing transgender girls to play girls’ sports.

That also allows them into girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and to stay in hotel rooms with biological girls during sports travel, the federal government said.

The Justice Department pointed to one “male student” who plays on the Champlin Park High School’ varsity softball team, pitching in 14 games last year and amassing a win-loss record of 12-1 during the regular season and carrying the team to a championship.

The student went on to pitch in all three games of the state championship tournament. In the final game the student pitched a complete-game shutout, en route to a 6-0 victory for Champlin Park.

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The student was not identified in court documents but the description matches that of Marissa Rothenberger.

But Justice Department lawyers said Minnesota had been on notice even before that, with notices sent in early 2025 saying the state was in violation of federal law. It was that probe that prompted Mr. Ellison to file his preemptive lawsuit.

The dispute will depend largely on whether, and how, Title IX applies to gender identity claims.

Minnesota collects more than $3 billion in federal money from the Education and Health and Human Services departments, which makes the state subject to federal Title IX strictures.

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The lawsuit joins prior ones against California and Maine over their transgender athletics policies.

And it’s part of a tsunami of litigation the Justice Department has fired at states, chiefly though not exclusively ones dominated by Democrats.

In Minnesota, DOJ has sued to shut down what it called “sanctuary” policies blocking some cooperation with Homeland Security on immigration enforcement, and the state’s laws allowing illegal immigrants who graduate from high schools in the state to pay in-state tuition at public colleges.

The Justice Department has also sued to get more access to Minnesota’s voter lists, part of a wave of lawsuits against states that have resisted.

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Overall, DOJ has been struggling to make its cases against the states.

Judges in Oregon, Michigan and California have shot down the voter list demands.

And in Minnesota, the federal court last week upheld Minnesota’s in-state tuition plan. Judge Katherine Menendez said that because out-of-state students who graduate from state schools could get the tuition benefit, the policy doesn’t run afoul of federal law.

In New York, the state beat a Trump challenge to a law that bars Homeland Security from making immigration enforcement arrests in state and local courthouses.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.