United States v. Maine Department of Education

On September 8, 2026, Do No Harm filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, supporting the federal government in U.S. v. Maine Department of Education. The case asks whether the state’s “inclusive” school-athletics policies deny female athletes the opportunity to engage in fair competition.

In our brief, we explain that Title IX bars identity-based exceptions to sex-separated athletic teams. Under Title IX, recipients of federal funding may create either co-ed teams or sex-based teams; however, the choice is mutually exclusive, and, whichever arrangement is chosen, an “equal athletic opportunity” must be afforded to members of both sexes.

In West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026), the Supreme Court made clear that, under Title IX, biology provides the safety and fairness justifications for dividing school sports teams by biological sex. Therefore, when Maine chooses to separate teams by sex but then allows biological males to play on the women’s and girls’ teams, its separation of the sexes is not sanctioned by Title IX’s exclusive safety and fairness rationales for separation.

Moreover, by forcing women and girls to compete alongside biological males, Maine fails to afford an equal athletic opportunity to women and girls, endangering them and denying them fair play in contravention of Title IX’s prohibition on discriminating on the basis of biological sex.

Additionally, as B.P.J. confirms, the ongoing debate of medical evidence does not support the claim that subjecting a male athlete to sex-rejecting interventions removes the advantage he has over female athletes.

Our brief also points out that Maine errs both by denying female athletes an “equal athletic opportunity” and by tacitly encouraging a regime of risky and unproven pediatric sex-rejecting interventions.

As we explain, gender-dysphoric male athletes subjected to dangerous, unproven medical interventions are themselves a second class of victims. These so-called treatments lack evidentiary support for treating pediatric gender dysphoria and may even worsen psychiatric symptoms.