DOJ sues Minnesota to force transgender athletes out of girls' sports

On March 30, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filed a 45-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota against the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League, alleging that the state's policies allowing transgender girls to compete in girls' sports and use girls' locker rooms and bathrooms violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The suit asks the court to declare Minnesota in violation, permanently enjoin transgender girls from female-designated sports, require sex-separated locker rooms and bathrooms, and establish a process to compensate female athletes — including "correcting" past athletic records. The department emphasized that Minnesota receives roughly $2.98 billion in annual federal education funding contingent on Title IX compliance.

The suit follows a September 2025 finding by the civil-rights offices of the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services that Minnesota was in violation of Title IX, which demanded the state restore athletic records and send apology letters to female athletes. After Minnesota declined a voluntary resolution agreement, the agencies referred the case to the DOJ in January 2026. The Minnesota State High School League has allowed transgender students to compete consistent with their gender identity since December 2014, and the state had preemptively sued the federal government in April 2025, arguing the Minnesota Human Rights Act requires trans-inclusive policies. The complaint names individual student athletes by school and team — including a Champlin Park High School softball pitcher — placing identifiable minors in a federal pleading, which advocates flagged as itself stigmatizing.

The filing is one strand of a coordinated federal campaign against trans-inclusive state policies: the DOJ has brought similar Title IX suits against Maine and California, the Education Department terminated six civil-rights resolution agreements protecting transgender students in April 2026, and a federal judge in May 2026 quashed a DOJ subpoena for trans-youth medical records as issued "in bad faith for an improper purpose." Announcing the Minnesota suit, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the department "acknowledges biological reality," while Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon presented the action as a Women's History Month commitment to "standing up for women."