Justice Department Sues Minnesota Over Title IX
Trump’s Justice Department has filed suit against Minnesota over trans youth in sports.
by Aly Gibbs
It’s been a tough year for Minnesota.
The occupation of the state by domestic terrorist organization ICE, and in particular the aggressive invasion of the Twin Cities, received a tremendous amount of national (and international) attention during January and February. Videos of ICE agents kicking in doors without warrants and abducting innocent people off the streets were shared all across the world, and public outrage reached its boiling point after the extrajudicial murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
Now, the Department of Justice has sued the state of Minnesota for allegedly violating Title IX. This late in the game, you ought to know all about Title IX, but in brief: it is federal protection against discrimination on the basis of sex in education. It has long been a political football between Democrats and Republicans, with the current back and forth starting during President Barack Obama’s first term. The weaponization of Title IX against transgender youth has gotten especially popular since Donald Trump infested the oval office for a second time early last year and immediately declared that the United States recognizes only two genders, that they are assigned at birth, and that they are immutable. A few weeks later, he passed a second Executive Order declaring that trans women competing in sports on women’s teams at any school that receives federal funding would be a violation of Title IX.
The argument here is that trans girls and women, possessing some great (yet utterly unobserved) athletic advantage against cisgender women is a violation of their right to compete fairly in sports and have privacy in changing facilities. Never mind that there is no evidence supporting the idea that a glut of trans women are dominating competitive sports, or any significant evidence of sexual misconduct by trans athletes.
Hell, forget that NCAA President Charlie Baker testified before Congress that there were fewer than 10 trans student-athletes in collegiate sports, as compared to the 530,000 cis student-athletes in the NCAA, before they were banned from participating in collegiate sports. Forget that there were even fewer trans and nonbinary Olympic competitors, before they were banned from participating in the Olympics.
Trump’s Department of Justice threatened Minnesota over trans athletes in October of last year, and again in January, but the state preemptively sued the federal government nearly a year ago after California and Maine faced similar threats of financial abuse over trans athletes. Justice Department lawyers are arguing that, because no enforcement actions have been taken against Minnesota, the state’s suit against them has no merit; at the same time, they launched their own suit against the state specifically to ensure that harm materializes.
How can the Justice Department argue that they are causing no harm, while filing suit specifically to cause the harm they deny they are doing? Maybe there’s nobody competent left to argue these cases, since a bunch of Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned after the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Or, maybe they just think they can hoodwink the courts into accepting the punitive measures they want to levy against states that dare to protect the civil liberties of their marginalized citizens.
What isn’t up for debate, at least, is the motivation behind these suits: an undying hatred of trans people, and a desire to push us out of as many aspects of public life as they can manage. They don’t want us using their bathrooms, playing their sports, or having forms of ID that actually identify us correctly. They want us to be afraid of the outside world.
Instead, I suggest we all take heart at the words of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, one of many fighting these naked acts of discrimination against our community:
“Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight. 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.”
