The University of Maine System said Friday it was found to be in compliance with federal and state laws. He also said the NCAA rules have been changed following President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports.
The confirmation comes after the Trump administration previously stated that the university system had investigated what it had previously violated Title IX, which banned discrimination based on gender in educational programs that receive federal funding, and that the Department of Agriculture from banning federal funding for UMS, which makes up seven universities across the state.
“We are relieved to have the Department’s Title IX Compliance Review behind us so that Maine Land Cultivation College and partners across the state can continue to leverage USDA and other important federal funds to strengthen and grow the rural communities they rely on through world-class education, research and expansion.”
According to the school system, in the 2024 fiscal year, UMS received nearly $30 million in USDA funding.
A statement from UMS said following a statement from the USDA on Wednesday that the university system “explicitly communicated compliance with Title IX’s requirements to protect equal opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports, as clearly stated in President Donald J. Trump’s executive order.”
Trump’s transgender sports order, which he signed last month, bans trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports and says it will withdraw funds from education programs that the federal government does not follow. The order calling trans women men states that having trans women in female sports is “demeaning, unfair and dangerous to women and girls, and equally denies the opportunity for women and girls to participate in competitive sports and excel.”
The USDA temporarily suspends UMS funding, the system said in a March 11 news release. In an email, the USDA Chief Financial Officer’s office said, “If we need to take a follow-on action related to a future Title VI or Title IX violation,” according to the release.
“The USDA is committed to supporting the president’s executive order, meaning that agencies that choose to ignore it can hope to lose future funds,” US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said last month in a news release.
Samantha Warren, UMS’s external and government chief executive, said Maine’s public universities have always been compliant with state and federal laws and NCAA regulations, and the system “still remained compliant when the NCAA updated the rules in February.”
In 2022, the NCAA adopted a sports-by-sport approach for transgender athletes, postponing policies set by the national governing body of each sport and being subject to review and recommendations by the NCAA committee. Last month, following Trump’s executive order, the College Sports Association updated its policy that “allocated competition for student-athletes, where women’s sports competition was born, to birth only.”
