The Trump administration confirmed on Tuesday a school system in Connecticut that is in the center of a continuous legal struggle for allowing transgender athletes to participate in competitive girls about girls on the participation of trans girls over youth sports.
James Demetriades, the mayor of Cromwell, said that the city’s school system could lose almost $ 1 million in federal special education funds if the department determines that it is in violation of Title IXThe Federal Civil Rights Law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal assistance.
The mayor, a Democrat, said on Monday that the school district would not be eligible for the State Sports Conference if it did not allow athletes to compete in sports teams segregated by sex consisting of their gender identity.
He said that the district is currently following “all applicable state and federal law, as well as the rules for the Connecticut interscholar athletic conference”, the governing body for the athletics of secondary school in the state. In an interview on Tuesday, Demetriades said Cromwell currently has CIAC athletes of the “Non -Diverso de Gender” high school.
“We don’t know why Cromwell was the target of this action,” Demetriades said in a statement on Facebook. He said the investigation also includes the use of bathrooms and changing rooms.
Ciac’s policy to allow transgender girls to compete in the sports school sports of girls were first challenged in 2020 by four runners who said they were unfairly forced to compete against the transgender sprinters of Cromwell and Bloomfield. CIAC argued that its policy is designed to comply with a state law that requires that all high school students be treated in accordance with their gender identity. He has also said that politics agrees with Title IX.
While a Federal Court of Appeals in 2022 dismissed the challenge of the plaintiffs to Ciac’s policy, saying that they lacked position and that they had not been deprived of an “opportunity to be champions”, the lawsuit was He later revived in 2023 and is currently pending. It could be ready for a trial in 2026.
The head of the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education, Craig Trainor, said in a statement that the investigation was analyzing whether Cromwell’s policies were “depriving girls and young people with equal athletic opportunities.”
The Secretary of Education of the United States, Linda McMahon, added that “this administration will fight on each front to protect the sports of women and girls.”
A community of more than 14,000, Cromwell is about 20 minutes south of the capital, Hartford. A demonstration was planned in support of the transgender young people on Tuesday night at Cromwell High School.
In 2019, during the first mandate of President Donald Trump, the Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation into the Connecticut policy that allows the athletes of the transgender high school compete as the genre with which they identify themselves. He determined that CIAC, Cromwell and several other communities in Connecticut resulted in “the loss of athletic benefits and opportunities for athletes.”
Days after assuming the position for his second term, Trump signed an executive order entitled ” Keep men out of women’s sports“That establishes that all funds of educational programs” that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, resulting in danger, humiliation and silencing of women and girls and deprive them of privacy, “they will be rescinded.
In his position, Demetriades asked state officials to help prevent responsibility and intervene to the city if Cromwell is sued by the Department of Justice.
In March, the Department of Education opened An investigation into Portland public schools, Oregon’s largest school district, so it allows a transgender athlete to compete in an athletics team for high school girls.
