Trump administration to pull federal funds for Maine prisons over trans inmate
The Trump administration is pulling funding from the Maine Department of Corrections over a transgender woman who is being housed in a women's prison, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an interview Tuesday.
"We pulled all nonessential funding from the Department of Corrections in Maine, because they were allowing a man in a woman's prison," Bondi told Fox News.
Bondi did not provide an amount during the interview, but Fox News reported it would be $1.5 million.
The inmate Bondi was referring to is Andrea Balcer, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2018 for the murder of her parents and family dog. Balcer's attorney argued that she was going through a gender identity transformation and that her parents were not accepting. Balcer had no criminal record before the killings on Oct. 31, 2016, at her family home in Winthrop, Maine. She was 17 at the time.
Balcer is currently incarcerated at the Maine Correction Center's Women's Center, according to the Maine Department of Corrections' online inmate database.
'We will pull your funding, we will protect women in prison, we will protect women in sports, we will protect women throughout this country,' Bondi said in the interview.
The Maine Department of Corrections released a statement Tuesday saying, in part, that it is "evaluating the impacts to services from these funding terminations."
The department noted that the funding will affect three grant programs: Improving Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Outcomes for Adults in Reentry; Second Chance Act Addressing the Needs of Incarcerated Parents and Their Minor Children; and Smart Probation: Innovations in Supervision Initiative.
Advocacy groups criticized the move.
'If the federal government truly cares about women, all women, they would not withdraw funding for essential programs that lead to public safety in our communities,' Jan Collins, assistant director of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, said Tuesday.
Maine has already been a target of an attempt to pull federal funding. The Department of Agriculture has paused federal funding for certain state educational programs over the state's compliance with Title IX, the law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education.
At issue is Maine's allowing of a transgender athlete to participate in women's sports. It comes after a public confrontation between Maine Gov. Janet Mills and President Donald Trump, which ended in Mills telling the president, 'We'll see you in court.' The federal government then launched an investigation into Maine's policies, which found that Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals' Association and a high school in the state were in violation of Title IX.
Last week, the federal government issued a 'final warning' to the state, saying it will send the case to the Justice Department if all parties do not sign an agreement by April 11.
Maine officials previously said they did not intend to comply.
This story first appeared on NBC Boston.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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