Minnesota sues Trump administration over anti-trans executive orders

Minnesota is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over two executive orders Attorney General Keith Ellison said amount to “bullying” of trans children.

At a news conference in his office, Ellison said Thursday the lawsuit was a response to multiple threats by the Trump administration to sue the state and withhold federal funding if Minnesota did not comply with executive orders issued in the first days after Trump took office.

The orders attempt to ban trans children from school sports and define two sexes — male and female — that are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Ellison called the Trump administration’s actions “bullying tactics — plain and simple."

“We will not let a small group of vulnerable children, who are only trying to be healthy and to live their lives, be demonized,” Ellison said.

He announced the lawsuit from his office in Minnesota Capitol, joined by parents of a trans child, a physician who treats trans kids and Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the first trans person elected to the Minnesota Legislature.

Finke said the new lawsuit, along with Ellison’s challenge of Trump’s attempt to ban gender-affirming care, are not about sports or healthcare, but human rights.

“This is about freedom,” she said.

Kelsey Leonardsmith, a physician and professor of family medicine, said trans children she treats are quitting sports and internalizing damaging messages about themselves.

“Now it’s not just classmates and the small-minded adults in their communities,” Leonardsmith said. “My patients are being bullied by the president of the United States.”

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, criticized Ellison for using taxpayer money for the lawsuit instead of doing “the right thing and (keeping) boys out of girls sports.”

“It’s a waste of taxpayer money to further a political agenda that makes girls less safe and makes sports less fair,” Demuth.

The federal government announced in February it would investigate the Minnesota State High School League, a nonprofit that runs athletics and extracurriculars for school districts across the state, based on belief that the league would not comply with the executive order on sports.

A few days later, Ellison issued a formal legal opinion that Trump’s executive order doesn’t have the force of law and therefore doesn’t supersede the Minnesota Human Rights Act. It says schools that comply with the order and prohibit children from participating in extracurricular activities consistent with their gender identities would be in violation of state law.

According to the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi then wrote a letter to Ellison in response to the published opinion and said the U.S. Department of Justice stood “ready to sue states and state entities that defy federal discrimination law.”

Earlier this month, the lawsuit says, Ellison received another letter from DOJ saying the agency would evaluate Minnesota schools and educational entities for their compliance with Title IX, calling Ellison’s opinion contrary to federal law. Ellison’s lawsuit says Title IX, which protects students from discrimination on the basis of sex, does not require the prohibition of trans children from sports, but instead protects them, citing federal case law.

The letter said Minnesota would lose its federal funds and that DOJ would seek “judicial resolution to ensure Minnesota schools are permitted to fulfill their obligations...and maintain federal funding.”

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the Trump administration to sue Minnesota,” Ellison said Tuesday. “Today, Minnesota is suing him and his administration because we will not participate in this shameful bullying.”

Ellison said he doesn’t look for reasons to sue the Trump administration and takes no joy in it.

“When he says that he’s going to withhold money from Minnesota, punish all of Minnesota because we will not sell out trans kids, then I just take extreme umbrage to that,” he said.

The Trump administration last week filed a lawsuit against Maine for not complying with the new federal order to ban trans athletes from school sports.

That lawsuit came after Trump sparred with Maine Gov. Janet Mills who said — when Trump asked whether she would comply with the executive order — that Maine would comply with state and federal law.

“We are the federal law,” Trump said and threatened Maine’s federal funding if it didn’t comply.

Ellison’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, claims Trump’s executive order usurps Congress’s role to legislate and control federal spending. It also argues that the president’s actions violate Title IX and the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Ellison, a Democrat, has been at the forefront of the legal fight against Trump’s administration, joining lawsuits concerning everything from funding for education and renewable energy to trying to halt the firings of probationary federal workers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.