Oppose Federal Investigation of RSU 19 for Inclusive Cheerleading Participation

I am writing to urge you to oppose the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights investigation into Regional School District 19 in Newport, Maine, specifically targeting Nokomis Regional Middle School for allowing a student to participate on its cheerleading team. This investigation is not about protecting anyone. It is about systematically excluding transgender students from public life. The facts of this case expose the absurdity of federal overreach. Superintendent Michael Hammer confirmed that the cheer squad is co-ed, non-competitive, and open to any student without cuts. The district received no complaints about the program before the federal investigation began. The school serves approximately 500 students in grades five through eight in a rural community of just over 3,000 people, where half the students are economically disadvantaged. These are children participating in a middle school activity that requires no competitive tryouts and excludes no one. The Department of Education is investigating 18 institutions nationwide, many in states with strong equal rights protections for transgender people. The federal government is effectively punishing schools for following their own state laws when no federal law requires schools to ban transgender students from teams aligned with their gender identity. Last year, the Trump administration already pulled school lunch funding for low-income children in Maine over the state's anti-discrimination laws, only settling in May after federal agencies unfroze the funding. This investigation uses dehumanizing language to describe transgender teenage girls and manufactures safety concerns where none exist. It targets vulnerable students in a small, economically struggling district and weaponizes federal power to enforce ideological conformity through middle school extracurriculars. The goal is not fairness in athletics. The goal is to make it impossible for transgender young people to participate in ordinary aspects of school life. I urge you to publicly oppose these investigations and defend the right of all students to participate in school activities without federal harassment.