As the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal funding to Maine over transgender school athletes, the Office of the Maine Attorney General apparently tried to delay any further federal action until lawmakers had time to consider two Republican bills to ban transgender athletes from girls sports, locker rooms and bathrooms, records show.

But the apparent request for a delay, echoed in a similar plea from Rep. Mike Soboleski, R-Phillips, last week, was batted down by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to correspondence obtained through a public records request from the Portland Press Herald.

“We have reviewed the proposed legislation at L.D. 233 and L.D. 868 that your team sent on Wednesday,” W. Daniel Shieh, associate deputy director of the HHS Office of Civil Rights, said in a March 17 email to Maine. “We are not prepared to stay the investigation at this time, but please let us know if those bills become law in Maine.”

Details about the video conference conversation that preceded the email, including how those bills came up, were not clear. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office would not elaborate, and DHHS said it does not comment on active investigations.

The response came days after the attorney general’s office formally pushed back on the federal investigation into a possible Title IX violation, questioning the basis of the review and accusing federal officials of not following their own rules requiring that voluntary compliance should be the goal “to the fullest extent practicable.”

Assistant Attorneys General Sarah Foster and Kimberly Patwardhan also criticized the pace of the investigation, lack of communication with state officials and the Trump administration’s reliance on information such as online news reports to find the state in violation of Title IX.

“The accelerated process described above appears to be at odds with HHS regulations,” Foster and Patwardhan said in a March 4 letter. “MDOE does not agree that it is in violation of Title IX, nor does it agree that OCR has laid out a sufficient factual or legal basis for such a determination.”

Maine was thrust into the center of a national debate on transgender issues after Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, made a social media post about a transgender girl winning a state indoor track title. The post included a photo of the athlete and identified their school and first name, creating security concerns for the family and the school.

That post caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who called out Gov. Janet Mills while she was attending a national governors’ event at the White House. Trump threatened to pull federal funding from the state and said, “We are the federal law,” prompting Mills to reply, “See you in court.”

A slew of federal investigations soon followed that public confrontation. HHS notified the state of its investigation on Feb. 21 — the same day that Trump confronted Mills — and issued a notice of violation on Feb. 25. Two days later, HHS sent the state a voluntary resolution agreement.

The internal communications reveal that HHS sought to conceal the proposed agreement — and to redact references from the state’s March 4 response — from the Press Herald’s public request.

The attorney general’s office declined to do so, citing Maine’s public records law.

In a virtual meeting the following week, Patwardhan highlighted two Republican bills to restrict transgender rights in an email to Daniel Shieh, associate director of HHS’ Office of Civil Rights.

“Per our call earlier, the pending legislation that we mentioned is L.D. 233 and L.D. 868,” Patwardhan wrote on March 12.

Shieh replied in an email five days later, expressing interest in the bills but declining to pause the investigation.

In that email, Shieh also attached an updated notice of determination, which expanded its scope to include the Maine Principals’ Association and Greely High School alongside the Maine Department of Education for allegedly violating Title IX by allowing transgender girls to compete in girls high school sports.

LD 233, presented by Rep. Richard Campbell, R-Orrington, would bar any school receiving state funding from allowing “a person whose biological sex assigned at birth is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designed for females.”

LD 868, presented by Elizabeth Caruso, R-Caratunk, would require athletic teams be designated for men, women or mixed participation, based on whether individuals have ever or will ever have a reproductive system that produces either eggs or sperm, designated female and male, respectively.

The latter bill applies similar rules to bathrooms and changing spaces. It also bars government entities, accrediting organizations and athletic associations from entertaining complaints about the gender policy, and would allow individuals to sue educational institutions for knowingly violating the regulations.

CONCERNS ABOUT PRESIDENTIAL OVERREACH

The state’s request for a pause on federal enforcement was echoed by a Republican state lawmaker at a news conference last week.

Soboleski was promoting his bill to remove “gender identity” from the Maine Human Rights Act, which the state has cited as the reason it cannot prohibit transgender girls from participating in women’s sports, when he made a direct plea to both Trump and Mills, who told a reporter that lawmakers should debate the state’s existing sports policy.

“Gov. Mills, this is what you asked for. Please support this important legislation and circle your party behind it’s passage,” he said April 1. “President Trump, please use your authority and influence to call for a halt to any further actions against our great state until out Legislature completes its work and passes this important piece of legislation.”

Mills, meanwhile, has said her opposition to Trump’s edict is based more on concerns about presidential overreach than who can participate in certain sports.

“Do not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a president can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation,” she said. “I believe he cannot.”