The public universities in Maine have no transgender athletes. The Trump administration nevertheless tried to pull the financing.

On February 25th at 10:50 a.m., an official from the US Ministry of Agriculture sent an employee at the Maine University of Maine in Orono with a list of 10 yes or no questions.

The university was examined for compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders in which transgender athletes from Transgender sports enthusiasts from the competition in women’s sports, and the federal official needed further information about the school guidelines. Millions of federal funds were at risk of non -compliance, the USDA warned.

The officer gave the university an hour and ten minutes to give her answers.

The suddenness of the demand that shocked the university’s staff started an investigation that developed at an unusual speed and received an unprecedented punishment when the USDA freely freely fed the federal financing of the university system on Monday, according to interviews with legal experts and documents this week this week this week for one Propica -news -news -news -news. The USDA then turned up the course late Wednesday by increasing its plan to freeze the total value of 35 million US dollars.

Throughout the USDA, Maine’s public universities never prevented from removing their funds that are used for research results that benefit industries such as agriculture, fishing and forestry, said Samantha Warren, spokesman for the Maine spokeswoman for the University of Main.

The initial decision for freezing financing was particularly surprising, since it came after the university made remarkable information available to the investigators, as records show: None of the seven schools within the Systems of the University of Maine has transgender women in their women’s sports teams.

“I have never seen how financing like this has been attacked,” said Amy Oppenheimer, founding partner of the Oppenheim Investigations Group, based in California, carried out the investigations by title IX.

Neither had Deborah Brake, professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and said that the federal government cannot legally freeze funds before a violation is found. Even if there is a violation, a legal procedure for assessing a fine is set.

“There is no legal authority in the law to temporarily freeze on the basis of a prospective violation. This is certainly not legally approved and I have never seen anything like this, ”said Brake.

The torture shows the chaotic, unpredictable and legally dubious character of the Trump government’s pressure campaign against Maine in order to oppose the executive order of the president by baning transgender girls from the girls’ sports girl, legal experts said. The USDA has been one of six federal authorities who have laid the state since governor Janet Mills publicly refused to fulfill the arrangement of “keeping men out of women’s sports” because it has been conflict with state law. Many consider Maine as a test case, as the Trump administration intends to force their guidelines on states anyway.

In addition to the examination of the USDA, the US Ministry of Health and Health Services for Civil Rights on a business day at the end of February carried out an investigation in which the Ministry of Education from Maine violates IX by allowed transgender girls to take part in the girls’ high school sports teams. Legal experts have occupied doubts about the legality of the knowledge and declared that the Federal Citizens’ Rights Act does not require a school team to exclude transgender girls. Title IX, which was adopted in 1972 as part of a pioneering civil rights law, prohibits sexual discrimination in educational programs that receive federal financing.

“The current administration tries to use the courts and state laws to enact an agenda,” said Oppenheimer, explaining that the interpretations of federal laws should be played in court and should not be decided by the executive department. Instead, the administration “tries to move quickly. Even if the dishes ultimately do not agree, they have already conducted chaos and forced some institutions to change the guidelines instead of risking fundamentally losing funds.”

The U.S. Ministry of Education for Civil Rights also started a review of titles IX in Maine, although state officials have not heard of investigators since the notification. Since then, the Trump administration has disappointed the department for the enforcement of civil rights when it released about half of the staff of the educational department on Tuesday, reported Prublica.

So far, the USDA is the only federal authority that examines the rules for the state’s transgender athletes who have questioned Maine officials, according to state officials and documents. It is rare that it does. Legal experts said that they were not aware of an earlier instance when the agricultural authority examined the school’s sports policy. As a land grant university, the university system has received more than $ 100 million from the USDA in recent years.

The Federal Agency’s approach immediately led the university officials about the lust. In response to written questions from the agency, Liz Lavoie, the title IX coordinator of the university, found that the U.DA of the university did not “explain any explanation for the basis or the scope of its examination or that in the process”.

“In addition, we only have hours to answer both questions, and we answer in good faith, but find the approach, in view of the lack of official service and the informal way that the questions and the interview were presented,” Lavoie wrote in an e -mail on February 26 to the BDN received by BDN at inquiries from the public documents.

In a question, the question arose whether the university system had separated teams, toilets and changing rooms with sex. (Answer: yes). Another asked whether the schools would allow it to identify a biological male athlete as a biological sports student athlete in order to establish the individual justification for the women’s sports. (Answer: No.)

The USDA also asked whether the NCAA policy belongs to the Liga by the NCAA -and the recent transgender athletes of transgender athletes of women’s teams according to Trump’s executive order -were applied “retrospectively” on transgender athletes who took part in women’s teams in Maine.

According to his level of knowledge, none of the seven universities within the system of the University of Maine Transgender athletes, who participated in NCAA sanctioned sports, reacted.

Since February 26, the USDA has not directly contacted the university system, said Warren, who pointed out that the federal authority has never actually said that the universities violated IX titles. Instead, it was determined that the condition of Maine violates violation and checked the universities in response.

The USDA did not even notify the university system directly that the financing wanted to do. On Monday, the university was forwarded to an e -mail from the Federal Authority in which it would no longer issue payments to all public universities from Maine. It would also hire the financing of Columbia University in New York.

The USDA said that freezing was temporary while he rated whether it should take further measures related to “prospective” violations, and there was no end date. According to Warren, around 35 million US dollars were at risk of $ 63 million in the active USDA Awards.

The Federal Government has never frozen funds on an academic facility for violating IX titles, even in cases where colleges systematically abused sexual assaults by the campus.

The most serious punishment is usually a fine, said Regina Federico, a lawyer who works in cases of titles IX at the Nesenoff & Miltenberg law firm in Boston. The federal government has also solved complaints in monitoring institutions in monitoring violations.

The USDA did not answer the BDN questions about why she originally explained that she would freeze the financing, and then decided not to do so.

The news of the late Wednesday that the USDA would not call up any funds was reminiscent of a similar episode last week when the federal government said that Maine would make it possible for a million dollar marine research scholarship to apply for again on February 28, a week after Mühlen had refused to go back to Trump at an event of the White House.

On Wednesday evening, the Chancellor Dannel Malloy from the University of Maine, Joan Ferrini-Mundy, President of the University of Maine, were grateful to learn from US Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, that the USDA had agreed to change the course and describe how the federal funds made their natural resource economy grow.

“You no longer have to look more than the legendary wild blueberry industry of Maine, which has recorded an increase in production by 500% in the past five decades, since the research and innovation of world class, which directly supported by the funding of the federal and state governments, was directly supported,” she wrote in a joint explanation. They added that they were “striving to put the whirlpool and worry for the past few weeks and to maintain our good work in order to advance Maine”.

For Oppenheimer, the title IX expert, the Federal Government’s measures do not seem to concentrate on the creation of fairness in athletics.

“It looks like it is about punishing maine,” she said.

Reporter Callie Ferguson can be reached [email protected]. Maine Focus editor Erin Rhoda can be achieved [email protected].