Maine Governor Clashes With Trump On Transgender Athletes: “See You In Court”

Maine’s Democratic governor Janet Mills clashed with President Donald Trump at a White House event Friday over her state’s opposition to his executive order seeking to bar transgender student athletes from playing on girls’ sports teams.

While the president was addressing a bipartisan group of governors, he stopped to single out Mills. “Is Maine here?” Trump asked, “the governor of Maine?” “Yeah,” she responded from across the room. “I’m here.”

Trump had been rambling about “men playing in women’s sports” and inaccurately retelling the story of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who received anti-trans hate for competing in the women’s cohort at the Paris Olympics, even though she herself is not transgender or intersex.

“Are you not going to comply with it,” Trump asked Mills, referring to his executive order. “I’m complying with the state and federal laws,” she responded quickly. “Well I am, we are the federal law,” Trump said before threatening to withhold Maine’s federal funding if Mills and other leaders in her state did not comply.

In early February, the Maine Principals’ Association, the body that governs school sports in the state, announced it would continue to allow transgender female athletes to compete, saying that Trump’s executive order conflicts with the Maine Human Rights Act.

“See you in court,” Mills told Trump in a rare act of public defiance to the president’s face by Democratic lawmakers. “Good, I’ll see you in court,” he responded. “I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

While brief, the exchange has garnered national attention as the Democratic Party tries to figure out how to respond to the Trump administration’s persistent upending of long-held federal standards.

Trump’s executive order, which notes several times in the text that it will “protect” women, used Title IX to justify excluding transgender athletes from playing on the sports team that matches their gender identity (though transgender boys and men are notably absent from the language). This is a much different interpretation from former president Joe Biden’s administration. In 2024, Biden finalized new Title IX rules barring schools from discriminating against transgender students.

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association President Charlie Baker, who testified in front of a Senate panel in December, there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes that he is aware of who currently compete in college sports and, nationally, just around 1 percent of adults identify as transgender, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law—a reality that highlights the outsized fixation from the Trump administration.

Shortly after Trump signed the executive order, the NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes and barred anyone who wasn’t assigned female at birth from participating in girls’ or women’s sports.

US President Donald Trump addresses Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) after she said “See you in court” over the issue of trans women in sports as Trump addressed a meeting of governors at the White House on February 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

In addition to Trump’s executive order targeting transgender athletes, the president issued an order declaring that the federal government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, as dictated “at conception”—a move that received swift pushback from medical and legal experts and reproductive rights advocates. He also signed an executive order banning federal funding or support for youth gender-affirming care for those under 19, which a judge has temporarily halted, and another targeting transgender Americans in the military, which a judge may strike down soon.

After the meeting of governors on Friday, the US Department of Education sent a letter to Maine’s education commissioner, Pender Makin, notifying her that it was initiating a “directed investigation” of the state’s own Education Department, according to The New York Times.

In a statement following her interaction with the president, Mills said: “If the President attempts to unilaterally deprive Maine school children of the benefit of Federal funding, my Administration and the Attorney General will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding and the academic opportunity it provides.”

“The State of Maine,” she continued, “will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”