Judge Rules Trump Cannot Take School Lunch Money From Hungry Kids In Maine Over Trans Students

The Bush-appointed judge chastised the government for failing to comply with rules over the termination of funding after it blocked funding over trans students in Maine.

School Lunch // Widleywonderworks // Wikimedia Commons //

On April 11, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to unfreeze millions in funding to Maine’s Child Nutrition Program. Judge John A. Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, issued a temporary restraining order in Maine v. USDA requiring the department and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins to “immediately unfreeze and release to the state of Maine any federal funding that they have frozen or failed or refused to pay because of the state of Maine’s alleged failure to comply with the requirements of Title IX.”

Woodcock issued the order while declining to weigh in on whether allowing transfeminine athletes to compete in girls’ sports would violate Title IX, the 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. The state of Maine and Attorney General Aaron M. Frey had requested clarification on the issue in their initial complaint. Title IX is widely interpreted by civil rights attorneys as protecting transgender students from discrimination, particularly following the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that sex-based protections in employment extend to LGBTQ+ individuals.

However, conservatives — including President Donald Trump in his February executive order restricting transgender participation in sports — argue that Title IX and similar sex-based anti-discrimination laws do not apply to transgender individuals. These claims often rely on opinions from far-right judges in lower courts. This position has become the foundation of their broader legal battle against transgender athletes. “All of the Trump administration’s actions have been built around this assertion that Title VII and Title IX provide no protections to LGBTQ people,” said Joshua Block, senior attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, in a 2020 statement to the New York Times. “It’s an Achilles’ heel that’s been built into every single thing they’ve done.”

This battle started in February, when Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) clashed with Trump at a National Governors Association meeting, famously shouting to Trump, “see you in court.” This spurred an immediate investigation from the United States Department of Education into the Maine Department of Education regarding a single trans girl in the state being allowed to play on girls’ teams. Maine, which is a sanctuary state for queer people, has strong protections for its trans residents in the form of non-discrimination statutes and safeguards for gender affirming care.

Things escalated when, on April 2, Secretary Rollins sent a threatening letter to Mills declaring a freeze in funding for “certain administrative and technological functions in schools,” swearing this as “only the beginning” before also threatening issued grants from former President Joe Biden’s administration. Rollins concluded by attacking Bidens’ “bloated bureaucracy,” opposing a so-called “leftist social agenda.” The freeze in funding was sudden, coming the very same day, relying on no legal analysis of Title IX to justify the prompt action.

What Rollins did not state in the letter was that she did not target any athletic institution in education. Instead, she froze funding for Maine’s Child Nutrition Program, which provides meals to children from low-income households in schools, child care centers, and after-school programs. An additional program under the same umbrella—the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)—also saw its funding halted. That program serves adults in day-care settings, primarily the elderly and individuals with severe intellectual disabilities such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

In her letter, Rollins ironically stated, “This pause does not impact federal feeding programs or direct assistance to Mainers; if a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow.” Yet, Judge Woodcock found this statement to be false, referencing a declaration by Maine Director of Child Nutrition Jane McLucas in which she said, “Shutting of the CACFP cash in lieu account prevents providers from using the funds to purchase the food that is distributed to children and adult in daycare settings.

McLucas added that the “[s]hutting of the CACFP administrative funds account prevents providers from paying the individuals who run the programs that prepare and provide the food to children and adults.” She concluded by mentioning that Maine does not have adequate funding on hand to supplement these federal grants, saying, “In other words, there will be no way to get funds from the USDA to the schools and other facilities, and children will not be fed.”

Woodcock’s ruling was based entirely on procedural grounds, something that has been a repeated issue for the Trump administration in all aspects of policy, with judges frequently siding against him in matters such as immigration. Woodcock reviewed what the proper procedures in this instance would be, and whether the USDA followed said procedures. On this, Woodcock concisely remarked, “The Court quickly resolved these questions in favor of the State.”

Woodcock went on to note a surprising fact: “The Federal Defendants have not argued in this case that the relevant federal laws and regulations for terminating federal funding of state programs do not apply to this situation, nor do they claim that they complied with the applicable federal law in the events resulting in this litigation.” Instead, their argument rested on the claim that Woodcock and the District Court do not have jurisdiction over the issue and that no “irreparable harm” had been demonstrated—an essential component in granting a preliminary injunction, which the state had requested. Woodcock sided with Maine on both points, adding, “To make certain, however, that the laws and regulations the State has alleged the Federal Defendants failed to follow are applicable, the Court briefly reviewed those regulations before concluding that the Federal Defendants froze the appropriated funds without observance of procedure required by law.”

Woodcock swiftly dismissed the jurisdictional challenge and rejected the defendants’ claim that no “irreparable harm” had occurred. He referenced McLucas’ testimony and noted that, according to the defendants, “less than $3 million” had been frozen to date. However, he wrote that if the freeze were to continue, “it would likely be a sum so large as to prohibit the Plaintiff from pursuing its requested relief.” Woodcock granted the request for a temporary restraining order, finding that “the State’s likelihood of success is extraordinarily high” in securing a preliminary injunction against the freeze. He delayed issuing that injunction to allow Maine time to build sufficient evidence in its favor.

Had this freeze continued across the entire state, an untold amount of Maine residents would go hungry. Food insecurity is something that disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous people of color, immigrants, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ individuals, among many more marginalized communities. Given the breadth of people the freeze would have affected, this shows that the USDA ruling was not truly about “fairness in women’s sports,” as many on the right-wing like to claim. Rather, it was about hurting the most marginalized among us by using the issue of transgender athletes to control Maine’s sovereignty.

On the same day this ruling was issued, the United States Department of Education announced that it was giving the Department of Justice control over its investigation of the Maine Department of Education, adding that it “will initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding, including formula and discretionary grants.”

It is currently unclear how Woodcock’s ruling will affect this proceeding, however it will likely add a significant barrier in any law-compliant attempts to strip progressive states of funding. In a post on BlueSky, Block detailed the importance of this lawsuit going forward: “The decision is mostly procedural, but an important *substantive* component is the court's explanation that even if the government could show that Title IX were violated, any funding termination would have to be limited to athletics. The feds can't just issue a blanket hold on *all* federal funding.”

Trump, who represents the party that once built itself off of championing “states’ rights,” has shown through this freeze that his administration is more interested in furthering regressive, far-right policies – and staging a de facto coup – over the entire country. With many institutions capitulating to his demands, actions like Maine’s and Woodcock’s are increasingly important as they demonstrate attempts at resisting his hostile takeover in the realm of law. While it will take much more than legal battles to push back against the growing tide of authoritarianism, especially with institutions like Immigration and Customs Enforcement violently kidnapping political dissidents and threatening to deport citizens born in this country, this defense of rule of law shows that fascist takeovers will not happen overnight, nor will they happen without a fight. This is something that, together, the public can make sure of.

In a statement, Attorney General Frey said, “This temporary restraining order confirms the Trump Administration did not follow the rule of law when it cut program funds that go to feed school children and vulnerable adults. This order preserves Maine’s access to certain congressionally appropriated funds by prohibiting an unlawful freeze by the administration. No one in our constitutional republic is above the law and we will continue to fight to hold this administration to account.”