The College Fix

University has not formally been accused of any wrongdoing

The University of Maine will have access to nearly $30 million in funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, following a brief freeze.

The USDA is currently investigating the public university in Orono as part of a broader federal investigation into the state’s compliance with Title IX. The federal government told the school on Monday its funding would be frozen. However, Maine Senator Susan Collins announced yesterday the funding has been restored.

The state is under investigation for allegedly failing to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. This announcement followed a highly publicized confrontation between Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills at the White House last month.

The Trump administration said institutions that receive federal funding must keep men out of women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, and off their sports teams.

However, Gov. Mills said she planned to defy the directive. Furthermore, the state allowed a male athlete to compete in women’s track, which included him winning a pole-vaulting competition, as The College Fix previously reported.

The university told The Fix prior to the funding freeze there have been “no allegations of wrongdoing by Maine’s public universities.”

“Instead, [the USDA has] made reference to State of Maine, of which our System is a quasi-independent entity,” Chief External and Governmental Affairs Officer Samantha Warren told The Fix via email on March 5.

“As it specifically relates to athletics, the University of Maine and all other public universities within our System that are members of the NCAA are also operating in a manner entirely consistent with that association’s recently updated policies, which necessitated no changes in our System policies or practices,” Warren said.

The $29.78 million in USDA funding for the current fiscal year “cultivated new talent, solved industry challenges, increased productivity and profits, created new products and high-paying jobs, improved Maine’s environment and quality of life, and made our food systems safer and more resilient,” the spokeswoman said.

The USDA previously declined to answer questions about the specific allegations against the University of Maine. Instead, a spokesperson directed The Fix back to its original announcement of the investigation

“President Trump has made it abundantly clear: taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars will not support institutions that discriminate against women,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins stated in the Feb. 22 news release. “USDA is committed to upholding the President’s executive order, meaning any institution that chooses to disregard it can count on losing future funding.”

The Fix also asked the USDA why it is investigating Title IX complaints, since that is usually handled by the Department of Education.

A former assistant secretary in the Education Department told The Fix “[w]e probably will see much greater enforcement of civil rights laws at many agencies in the areas of highest interest to the Trump administration, such as antisemitism, racial preferences, and the implications of defining sex as including only two distinct sexes and not encompassing ‘gender.’”

“Probably as a matter of federal law pre-empting state law, USDA’s interpretation of Title IX should prevail despite any conflicting state law about sex or ‘gender,’” Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow in education policy at the Heritage Foundation, told The Fix. He served in the first Trump administration.

“The Supreme Court eventually will decide many of the contours of Title IX due to the growing issue of different interpretations by different courts and the problem of executive branch interpretations changing with new administrations,” Kissel said.

President Joe Biden’s USDA also enforced Title IX, including trying to strip school lunch funding from schools that did not allow males to use the girl’s locker rooms and play on their sports teams, according to resources Kissel provided The Fix.

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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: President Donald Trump speaks at the podium. White House/YouTube

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