DOJ Sues Minnesota Over Transgender Athletes in Girls Sports, Locker Rooms

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division filed a 45-page lawsuit Monday against the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League, accusing both agencies of violating Title IX by allowing transgender girls to compete in girls' athletics and access girls' locker rooms and bathrooms. The complaint, filed March 30 in federal court in Minnesota, seeks a declaration that the state is in violation of federal civil-rights law and an injunction ordering officials to bar transgender girls from competing in female prep sports.

The lawsuit alleges that the Minnesota Department of Education and the MSHSL's policies create conditions that the DOJ says amount to sex-based discrimination. The 45-page complaint contends those policies "create unfair competition, deny girls equal educational opportunities, and expose girls to a hostile educational environment with heightened risks of physical injury and psychological harm."

The filing did not come without warning. Last September, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights announced that its investigation found Minnesota had violated Title IX. Last December, Minnesota's state educational agency and the MSHSL rejected the Trump administration's proposed resolution agreement, and negotiations collapsed.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was direct in his response. "In April of last year, I sued the Trump administration to stop them from targeting trans kids who just want to play on their school team," Ellison said. "This new suit is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that's already been in litigation for months." Minnesota officials have argued that the state's human rights law applies to transgender students and supersedes federal directives issued by President Donald Trump, a position central to the preemptive lawsuit Ellison filed last April. That case remains pending as a federal judge considers the government's motion to dismiss. The MSHSL offered no substantive response, saying it does not comment on threatened or pending lawsuits.

The administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine and California and has threatened to pull federal funding from universities it says are out of compliance, including San Jose State and the University of Pennsylvania. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to block federal funding for schools that allow transgender girls and women to participate in school sports, and directed the DOJ to pursue enforcement.

For Minnesota schools and the MSHSL, the immediate pressure is procedural and financial. If a federal court ultimately sides with the DOJ and issues an injunction, the league would face a legal obligation to revise its eligibility rules before the next athletic season, potentially mid-calendar year. The threat of withheld federal education funding adds a second layer of urgency: Minnesota schools that receive Title IX-linked federal dollars could face funding clawbacks while the litigation proceeds.

The case is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought by the Trump administration targeting state and local policies on student athletes who identify as transgender. With parallel cases already moving through federal courts in Maine and California, the judicial rulings that emerge from these three states could set binding precedents that reshape how Title IX is applied to transgender student athletes in every school district in the country, with implications extending to K-12 athletic associations and, ultimately, collegiate governance. The Minnesota case may prove the most legally complex of the three: unlike Maine, Minnesota entered federal court first, putting two competing interpretations of Title IX before the judiciary simultaneously.