John Oliver highlights Maine in trans athletes segment

Maine is again in the national spotlight because of transgender athletes.

But not in a bad way. At least, directly.

In Sunday’s episode of his HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” comedian John Oliver took a look at President Donald Trump’s six-week-old pressure campaign against the state over the continued inclusion of transgender athletes in scholastic sports.

Maine has been thrust into the crosshairs of Trump since he signed an executive order in February attempting to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

Under the Maine Human Rights Act, it is illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of gender identity, a protection that was extended in 2021 to explicitly prohibit that in education. The Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees scholastic sports for 151 public and private schools, previously had a policy permitting transgender athletes to compete on the team that corresponds to their gender identity. Since 2021, the association has directed schools to adhere to the Maine Human Rights Act.

During his segment, Oliver highlighted reporting from the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica that found there are currently more federal agencies — six — investigating Maine for alleged Title IX violations (based on an untested legal theory running counter to court precedent) than transgender athletes — two.

“Two, and I know you might be thinking, ‘OK, but in Maine, two kids is like half the kids, right?’ But it’s actually not. They’ve got more,” Oliver said.

To put that into further context, about 45,000 students participated in high school sports in Maine during the 2023-24 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. (That does count students who participated in two or more sports multiple times.)

So transgender athletes account for only about 0.004 percent of all Maine high school athletes.

And those numbers aren’t any bigger over time.

Between 2013 and 2021, the Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees scholastic sports for 151 public and private schools, heard from 56 trans students wishing to participate on a high school sports team consistent with their gender identity, only four of whom were trans girls.

At the collegiate level, the University of Maine System had no transgender athletes competing on any women’s team, and the system is following the rules set by the NCAA, which changed its policy toward transgender athletes after Trump’s executive order.

Trump singled out Maine during a Republican governors meeting in Washington during which he floated withholding federal funding from the state if it doesn’t comply with his executive order. The next day Trump made that threat during an event at the White House and singled out Gov. Janet Mills, who was in attendance. In a heated exchange, Trump pressed Mills on the state’s policy toward transgender athletes and the governor told the president that she would “see you in court.”

“You know what, I take back everything mean that I have ever said about you, Maine. Like that you’re lobster-stuffed lighthouse perverts that the rest of the Northeast loves to forget. I still broadly think that to be true, but I’m not going to be saying it out loud anymore,” Oliver said.

During the segment, Oliver acknowledged the differing physical capacities of male and female athletes, but noted that it’s not as clear cut as the current public debate makes it seem.

The performance advantage of men over women can vary greatly depending on the sport and event, pointing to the male advantage in swimming during the 50-meter is 13.2 percent, compared with 5.7 percent in the 1500-meter freestyle. So that advantage is far from immutable.

He also highlighted the paucity of research into the performance of transgender athletes, which has been limited by the small sample sizes, including two studies concerning a single athlete.

Further, governing bodies for certain sports have strict policies that can require athletes to have undergone hormone therapy for two years before being permitted to commit.