By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -The state of Maine on Monday filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to freeze federal funding for education programs in the state over its refusal to ban transgender women from sports.
The lawsuit came a week after USDA announced the freeze, one of several actions President Donald Trump’s administration had taken against the state since Democratic Maine Governor Janet Mills clashed with the Republican over the issue of transgender athletes during a White House event in February.
During that meeting, Trump threatened to withhold funds from the state over transgender athletes participating in girls and women’s sports. Maine had become a focal point of the issue when a transgender athlete from Greely High School won a state championship in pole-vaulting in the girls’ division.
In an April 2 letter to Mills, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the USDA’s funding freeze was “only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.”
In a statement, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, said the administration was “illegally withholding grant funds that go to keeping children fed.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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