📰BIDDEFORD | OPINION | Girls Deserve a Fair Field. That Is What Title IX Was For.
By Jason Litalien
Independent candidate, Maine State Senate District 32 • Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, Lyman, and Arundel
September 29, 2026, I grew up in Biddeford. I graduated from Biddeford High School, served 13 years in the Air Force, earned a law degree at the University of Maine School of Law, and built a small law practice here. My wife, Kristen, raised two children before we met, one is female and she worked hard to earn her spot on the various athletic teams she played on, including at college. I am running as an Independent for Senate District 32 for many reasons, and one is because Augusta keeps choosing slogans over the girls who actually have to compete.
"This is not a complicated question, and it is not a cruel one. Girls' sports exist so that girls can compete against girls." - Jason Litalien
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was written to give women and girls an equal chance at the field, the pool, the scholarship, and the diploma. The federal rules that have implemented Title IX for decades allow schools to keep separate teams for males and females for a reason: after puberty, the average male body is stronger, faster, and more powerful. That is not politics. That is why we have a women's category in the first place. How is it “fair” to disadvantage one person while giving a greater advantage to another?
In June 2026 the U.S. Supreme Court said the same thing in plain English. In the West Virginia and Idaho cases, the Court held that states may limit girls' and women's school sports to biological females, and that doing so does not violate Title IX. Justice Kavanaugh wrote that separate teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable given the inherent physical differences between the sexes. The Court was not inventing a new rule. It was reading the statute Congress passed to protect girls.
Maine is still on the other side of that line. The Maine Principals' Association lets a student compete on the girls' team based on gender identity. After a 2024 policy change, schools are not even required to collect medical records or official documents to verify eligibility. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights concluded in March 2025 that Maine's approach violates Title IX by denying female students an equal athletic opportunity. The Justice Department sued. Twenty-seven other states already limit girls' sports to girls. Maine's Senate killed the bills that would have aligned us with federal law and with those states.
My opponent, Henry Ingwersen, voted with the Senate majority to reject those bills in June 2025 — LD 233, LD 868, and LD 1134. On the floor he framed the question as whether children would feel welcome in the hallway. Girls who train before dawn, lift after practice, and chase a college roster spot are not a hallway abstraction. They are the students Title IX was written to protect.
This is not about being mean to anyone. Transgender Mainers deserve to be treated with dignity at work, in housing, and in public life. They should not be bullied. They should not be isolated. A fair sports category is not an act of hatred. It is the only way the girls' category remains a girls' category. A male-bodied athlete can compete. The question is which category preserves a fair playground for the girls who have spent years earning their place.
Look at what happens when the women's category does not rest on sex. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Italian boxer Angela Carini trained her whole life for a women's Olympic bout. Forty-six seconds in, she stopped the fight, saying she had never been hit like that. Her opponent, Imane Khelif of Algeria, was raised as a girl and entered on a female passport. However, in 2023 laboratory report, published in 2025, described a male hormone in the blood test. In February 2026, the French sports daily L'Equipe asked Khelif about possessing the gene on the Y chromosome that drives male development. Khelif answered, "Yes, and it's natural," and said hormone treatment had been used to lower testosterone for competition. World Boxing then required genetic sex testing for its events and kept Khelif out of the female category until that test is completed. If the women's category does not mean female, a girl who did everything right can lose the bout she trained a lifetime for.
College sports make the cost concrete. Athletic scholarships and NCAA roster spots in women's sports are limited. When a male-bodied athlete moves into the women's category, a girl can lose the place, the podium, or the aid that helps her pay for school. Lia Thomas swam on the University of Pennsylvania men's team, then won the 2022 NCAA Division I women's 500-yard freestyle. Female swimmers who trained for that championship lost the title. In 2025, after a federal civil-rights review, Penn restored individual records and titles to the female athletes who had lost to Thomas and agreed to send them apology letters. That is not a culture-war parable. That is what it looks like when a girl's opportunity is reassigned.
It has also happened in Maine. In 2025 a Greely athlete who was born male and competes in the girls' category won the Class B girls indoor pole-vault state title. That result helped decide a team championship. Parents and girls in this district know the difference between inclusion in school life and rewriting the finish line.
Most Americans already see it that way. Gallup found in 2025 that 69 percent of U.S. adults say transgender athletes should compete on teams that match their sex at birth. Pew has found the same broad discomfort with the opposite rule. You do not need to be cruel to notice a lopsided playing field. You only need to be honest.
Here is what I will take to Augusta. First, Maine should follow Title IX as the Supreme Court and the U.S. Department of Education now read it: school teams designated for girls are for biological females. Second, locker rooms and bathrooms designated for girls should follow the same rule. Third, transgender students should still have a path to compete — in the category that matches sex, or in a mixed or open division if a school or association creates one — without taking a girl's roster spot, scholarship, or safety. Fourth, stop treating a fairness rule as an attack on a person's worth. We can protect girls and treat every student decently at the same time.
Henry had the vote. He used it to keep Maine out of step with the federal standard written to protect girls. If you want more of that, stay with Henry. If you want a fair field for the daughters who actually have to run, swim, vault, and box for the chance they earned, vote for me. Common sense. Stronger schools. A playing field that still means something.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jason Litalien is an Independent candidate for Maine Senate District 32. Jason is a Veteran of the UnitedStates Military, and both lives and owns a business in Biddeford, Maine.
According to Litalien's campaign, he is "focused on lowering costs improving education, and supporting responsible growth in Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, Lyman, and Arundel."
To learn more about Jason Litalien, please visit https://jason4maine.com/.
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