Maine Athletes File Title IX Complaint Over Competing Against Transgender Players

On Monday, two Maine high school juniors stood at a news conference in the State House in Augusta and said they had lost something in competition that no scoreboard records. Reagan Wilson of Fryeburg Academy and Morgan Clark of Windham High School, a varsity soccer captain, spoke alongside advocates pushing for a statewide vote on sex-based eligibility rules. Their attorney announced that a federal civil rights complaint would be filed the same day.

Wilson told the room that many girls and women are discovering a crushing disappointment in being beaten in their own sports by males who should never have been allowed to compete. She said she has competed in swimming, cross-country, indoor and outdoor track, soccer and softball. In cross-country, she said, she raced against a biological male in many of her races, and most recently she faced a male playing on an all-girls soccer team. She called that unacceptable and said it has denied her and other girls an equal opportunity to compete and win.

Clark, who has played soccer in Maine since she was 4, described a change over one year. Last year, she said, this was something she saw only online; now it is on her own field. She pointed to an October game in which her team tied a side it has easily outranked in past years, a team with a male athlete, in her words. Windham played South Portland to a 1-1 draw on Oct. 1. The Portland Press Herald reported that South Portland finished the previous season 3-9-2 and ranked 14th in the regional Heal point standings.

A draft complaint provided to OutKick names a transgender player on South Portland's girls' soccer team as the focus of the allegations. A scoring chart supplied for the planned filing credits that player with 15 goals and 10 assists through South Portland's Oct. 27 playoff game. The draft argues that Maine's eligibility policies deprive female athletes of equal competitive opportunities, and it recounts Wilson's earlier experiences in cross-country and indoor track and field.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Tavia Bruxellas McAlister said the group would file a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The draft asks for an investigation of four bodies: the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals' Association, the South Portland School Department and the Windham Raymond School District. It also seeks changes to eligibility policies and remedies for alleged past violations. Both teams were eliminated in regional semifinals on Friday, so they cannot meet again this postseason, but the draft says both girls plan to play varsity soccer next year and expect to face the South Portland athlete.

The complaint lands in a dispute that was already well advanced. The Education Department announced a Title IX noncompliance finding against Maine in March 2025, and the Justice Department sued the state's education department the following month over transgender participation in girls' sports. Maine officials and the MPA have defended their approach by citing the Maine Human Rights Act, which protects against discrimination based on gender identity. The MPA's published policy lets transgender students compete according to either birth sex or gender identity, but not both. In June, the Supreme Court upheld state restrictions on transgender participation in girls' and women's sports, but it expressly left open whether schools may allow transgender athletes on female teams, the question underlying Maine's fight.

The athletes appeared as referendum organizers announced a second try at reaching voters. Leyland Streiff, principal officer of the Protect Girls Sports in Maine ballot committee and a leader of Maine Girl Dads, said the group is submitting 4,836 additional signatures toward the 2027 ballot. Its earlier petition fell 532 valid signatures short of qualifying for this year's election after a legal challenge and review, and the new signatures will require state validation. The proposal would tie eligibility for designated school teams, and access to bathrooms, locker rooms and other private spaces, to the sex on a student's original birth certificate. It would also allow students to sue over qualifying violations. Clark said she hopes it lets girls like her and her friends play the sport they love fairly and safely.

What to watch now is whether the Office for Civil Rights opens an investigation into the complaint, and whether signature validation puts a sex-based eligibility measure before Maine voters in 2027.