Serephina Owens, 7, and her brother, Corbyn, eat lunch at the PAL Center in Auburn in June 2022. It was the first day of the Auburn School Department’s Summer Feeding Program. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

The United States Department of Agriculture acknowledged Thursday that it has frozen just under $3 million in federal funds to Maine schools, but said that’s not enough to warrant the extraordinary relief the state is demanding from a federal judge.

The USDA announced in March that it was freezing some grant money awarded to Maine after it determined the state’s policies for transgender athletes violate Title IX, a federal law that protects people from discrimination based on sex.

Maine has denied that the state is breaking any federal laws and the Office of the Maine Attorney General sued the USDA and Secretary Brooke Rollins on Monday seeking a temporary restraining order to restore all funding.

Court records filed in the case Thursday reveal the exact amount of funding at stake — less than $3 million — which the USDA says wasn’t intended to pay for food. (The attorney general’s office didn’t dispute the amount in court records filed Thursday. )

These grants were mostly administrative, the department argued, intended to cover technology, training, coordination and other overhead costs. This is the first time the USDA has publicly said how much funding it pulled and which grants were affected.

But the state argues that losing that money, which the USDA said is meant to pay for the people and systems administering school lunch programs, has the same effect as cutting the money that pays for food, and therefore is so devastating that the state deserves immediate relief.

Jane McLucas, who oversees feeding programs for Maine schools, said in a letter to the court that the USDA’s freeze directly impacts the state’s ability to feed children. She said schools and other programs “will have to cease operations and children (and vulnerable adults) will not be fed.”

FINDING THE RIGHT VENUE

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock seemed more concerned with a different question this week: whether the lawsuit was even filed in the right court.

In a separate case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, the justices sided with the Trump administration and vacated the decision by a Massachusetts judgethat halted the Department of Education’s freeze of DEI-related grants to several states.

In that split decision, the Supreme Court ruled that these claims are better suited for the Federal Claims Court, and not U.S. District courts. Woodcock asked both sides to respond to the Supreme Court’s recent order and whether “it is distinguishable from this case.”

Maine’s attorneys argued Thursday that their case is vastly different than the one weighed by the Supreme Court. Their lawsuit is more than a contractual dispute, the attorneys said, and their cases raises serious concerns about the executive branch’s “enforcement of Title IX action.”

“The fact that here the federal government’s enforcement action is the termination of grants does not somehow turn this into a breach of contract case,” wrote Deputy Chief Attorney General Christopher Taub. “The state is seeking to enforce statutory and regulatory rights that are distinct from any contractual or other obligation arising from the terms or conditions of any individual grant that defendants have frozen.”

Taub also argued the USDA violated legal limits on its ability to terminate financial assistance, and the state is entitled to a judge’s review.

Here’s what the USDA pulled from Maine feeding programs:

• The Farm to School State Formula Grant: to make it easier for schools to obtain and use local food in their meals, and to provide agricultural education opportunities
Amount frozen: $592,838.42

• Child Nutrition Technology Innovation Grants: to help schools improve how they evaluate and organize their systems for feeding children, by paying for new software, technology and training to staff
Amount frozen: $917,023.68

• State Administrative Funds: to pay salaries, employee benefits, travel expenses, office equipment and other overhead costs
Amount frozen: $592,228.05

• School meal equipment grants: to buy equipment needed for making meals
Amount frozen: $37,544

• Child and Adult Care Food Program Sponsor Administrative Funds: to pay administrative costs for organizations that sponsor day cares
Amount frozen: $73,182

• The State Administrative Funds for the Summer Food Service Program: helps pay state employees who run food programs
Amount frozen: $77,949.30

• Child and Adult Care Food Program “Cash in Lieu” Payments: The only grant funding used to buy food, these payments give the state cash to help feed children and adults in institutions that provide care
Amount frozen: $73,388.60