The U.S. Department of Education announced on Thursday that it would be elevating its inquiry into Minnesota’s Title IX violations after the state let a male athlete dominate a girls’ softball competition, depriving all-female teams of the state championship.
The investigation into the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) will be conducted by the Title IX Special Investigations Team (SIT), a joint unit of the Departments of Education and Justice to “ensure timely, consistent resolutions to protect students, and especially female athletes, from the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities,” a press release about SIT stated.
The investigation comes after MDE and MSHSL allowed a 17-year-old male student who claims to be a female to play on the Champlin Park High School girls’ softball team. The decision to force boys into girls’ sports was the driving force behind the stolen state championship, as the male-led team bulldozed every other team in the postseason.
The male student pitched all 35 innings of sectionals and the state tournament, allowing only two total runs en route to the state championship victory. Girls on the receiving end of destructive gender ideology policies were devastated, Outkick reports, with one calling it “one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever gone through,” adding, “knowing that it’s essentially cheating, and I got cheated out of a state championship game, it was hard for me to deal with that.”
“The Trump Administration has a duty to protect women and girls and uphold federal civil rights, and I am pleased to partner with Attorney General Pam Bondi to elevate the Department’s investigations in Minnesota to the Title IX Special Investigations Team,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. “Minnesota’s continued indifference to females’ civil rights is completely unacceptable. We must ensure women and girls are not stripped of their hard-earned accolades or subjected to the danger and indignity of unfair competitions, and we will fight to restore antidiscrimination protections under Title IX to the fullest extent of the law.”
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation into MSHSL in February after the league announced it would fight tooth and nail to make sure male athletes could keep stealing records and championships from females.
The league said it would follow state law allowing the males to compete against females based on a claimed “gender identity,” which is a violation of federal civil rights law. OCR has been investigating MDE since June 3 because of those policies, which include allowing males into the intimate spaces of females, who are forced to undress in front of them.
McMahon is placing those two investigations under the purview of SIT as of Thursday.
Meanwhile, Minnesota remains under the control of its flamboyant governor, Tim Walz, D-Minn., who has worked tirelessly to push the state far into transgender ideology, even making it a “sanctuary state” for doctors who mutilate children.
Democrat Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney general, launched his own lawsuit against the Trump administration in order to force males into female sports in April.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.