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A Delaware lawyer and a state lawmaker have filed a federal complaint that seeks to have the state prevent transgender girls from playing on girls’ middle and high school sports teams.

Yet in Delaware, where students are permitted to play on school teams that match their gender identity, there are no known transgender athletes to ban. Nor have there been in recent years, if ever, state officials said.

That reality, however, hasn’t stopped attorney Thomas S. Neuberger and Sussex County Republican Sen. Bryant Richardson, who have long sought to keep transgender girls off girls’  track, swimming, volleyball and other teams.

Their complaint, filed this month, asks the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the state’s compliance with federal law, the U.S. Constitution and a new executive order from President Donald Trump.

Should the state “illegally refuse” to comply, Neuberger and Richardson want the Trump administration to issue an order “terminating all federal educational funding” to Delaware.

Forfeiting those federal dollars would be a major blow to Delaware. Currently, the state gets about $336 million annually — about 10% of the total cost to run Delaware K-12 public schools — from the feds.

The 12-page complaint piggybacks off actions and statements by President Trump, who didn’t waste any time targeting transgender athletes at the outset of his second term.

During his Jan. 20 inaugural address, Trump declared that under new U.S. government policy, “there are only two genders: male and female.”

Days later, the president issued an executive order that said his administration would “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls.” Within 24 hours, the NCAA, governing body for college sports, barred transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Trump repeated those sentiments during his address to Congress last week, and introduced a high school girls’ volleyball player who suffered a brain injury when a transgender girl “smashed a ball” into her face, he said. “From now on, schools will kick the men off the girls’ team or they will lose all federal funding.’’

The complaint about Delaware targets the state Department of Education and Secretary Cindy Marten, the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association [DIAA] which governs school sports, and the board of the Red Clay Consolidated School District — largest in the state — whose policy lets students play on teams that match their gender identity.

The U.S. Department of Justice and officials at Delaware agencies named in the complaint would not comment.

Neither would Gov. Matt Meyer, who took office the day after Trump did. Meyer spokesman Nick Merlino did, however, outline the governor’s position on the divisive issue.

“Gov. Meyer doesn’t believe that trans girls should be playing in girls’ sports, but ultimately he defers those decisions to the leagues and localities,” Merlino said.

Trans girls can play on girls’ teams, but none do

Last year Delaware relaxed a longstanding policy that allowed transgender students to play on a team that differed from their “assigned sex at birth” if they met ‘’minimum standards’’ adopted by the board of DIAA, which is part of the Delaware Department of Education.

Those standards let transgender athletes play on their chosen teams if they met one of the following criteria:

• Provided an “official record,” such as a revised birth certificate, driver’s license or passport “demonstrating legal recognition of the students reassigned sex.”
• Received certification by a physician that the student “has had appropriate clinical treatment” or is otherwise in the process of “transition to the reassigned sex.”

The policy let schools make the final decision. It also let other schools “appeal the eligibility of a transgender student” to the DIAA board for reasons of competitive inequity or safety of teammates or opponents.

The new policy, adopted in October, dropped the minimum standards and said transgender athletes could play on their chosen teams as long as the school’s policy complies with a 1972 federal law known as Title IX.

Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” The law has generally been credited with leading to increased participation in sports and improved programs for girls and women at the high school and collegiate level.

David Baylor, executive director of the DIAA, said the revised policy essentially makes participation in Delaware school sports a “gender neutral’’ matter.

“As it stands right now, the policy really rests with the individual school districts. Whatever their policy is, of course we reinforce that,’’ Baylor told WHYY News on Sunday while overseeing the boys and girls high school basketball championships at the University of Delaware.

Baylor said DIAA is awaiting further guidance from the Department of Education but said no transgender athletes have played in recent years on Delaware school teams.

“I work hand-in-hand with the athletic directors, and no one has approached us about the issue,” Baylor said.

But Kathy Carpenter, a transgender woman who since 2022 has been on DIAA’s rules committee, said the state’s policy generally dissuades transgender athletes from playing in Delaware and invades their privacy.

Carpenter noted that scholastic athletes must undergo a physical and fill out DIAA “consent” forms to be eligible to play — forms that, for example, require them to detail their “complete medical history,” any conditions they have and medication they take. Carpenter notes that a section for “females only” asks if the student has “ever had a menstrual period.”

Carpenter says the policy simply contains too many hurdles for transgender girls.

“The rules are made to exclude students from participation,’’ Carpenter said. “They’re not inclusive and the medical application is a non-starter. And there shouldn’t be any difference between male and female and transgender. It should be that all athletes should be able to compete on a team that you identify as.”

WHYY News sought out opinions from fans on the transgender sports issue during the basketball finals. Most said they didn’t want to talk about the sensitive issue, but two who did provided opposing viewpoints.

Bobby, a middle-aged man who wouldn’t provide his last name because he coaches football and didn’t want to alienate people in the education arena, said he’s against transgender girls playing on girls’ teams.

“Let the guys play with the guys, the girls play with the girls. It’s going to be an uncompetitive advantage for the guys that want to play with the girls,’’ Bobby said.

“We need women to represent women in full capacity and to be competing with one another and showing their true highlights, their true strengths and how far they’ve come’’ during the more than half-century since Title IX became law.

Layla Robinson, an 18-year-old Dover High student, disagrees.

“They should be able to [play on girls’ teams] because of the medications that they’re provided with,’’ Robinson said. “It lowers the testosterone in the transgender female so that they have the ability to play like a regular quote-unquote female.”

She said her view is typical of Gen Z and Gen Alpha — people born since 1995.

“It’s more of a millennial thing, that the older generation just doesn’t approve of it,’’ Robinson said. “They can’t really stop what’s happening in our generation.”

‘Then all of a sudden there’s one less girl’ on a team

While Delaware grapples with its own policy, Neuberger and Sen. Richardson want the federal government to force the state’s hand.

Their complaint seeks one of two outcomes:

• The federal government halts education funding to Delaware if the state keeps “violating” Trump’s executive order, Title IX and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
• The state makes a “binding agreement to obey’’ Trump’s order “so that federal funding for education can continue.”

The complaint noted that U.S. Attorney General Pam Biondi, a Trump appointee, has promised to crack down on states that violate Trump’s order and Title IX.

Biondi has already begun investigations against California, Minnesota and Maine, and on Feb. 25 issued a press release that said her office “will defend women and does not tolerate state officials who ignore federal law.”

Neuberger told WHYY News he aims to kickstart an investigation of Delaware.

‘It’s simply discrimination against young girls to allow transgender boys to participate,’’ Neuberger said, using the misgendered term to describe transgender girls. “We thought that it would be best to just meet it head-on.”

The lawyer used the example of a girls’ team with limited roster spots.

“If we’ve only got 12 people and you’ve got one transgender boy on the team, then all of a sudden there’s one less girl,’’ Neuberger said.

“What I want is for the state of Delaware to decide what it’s going to do,’’ he said. “If the state of Delaware chooses not to follow the law, then there will be a consequence.”

‘I want people of Delaware aware that funding is at risk’

Sen. Richardson has twice tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would require Delaware students to play only on sports teams that match their biological sex as determined at birth.

In 2022, his bill drew opposition from then-state Sen. Sarah McBride, who is openly transgender and is now in Congress. At the time, McBride chaired the Senate committee that prevented Richardson’s bill from getting a vote in the full Senate.

During the panel hearing, McBride asked Richardson, “So you believe that I have a biological advantage over Elena Delle Donne in basketball?” McBride was talking about the Delaware hoop legend who is a two-time WNBA most valuable player.

McBride also called the bill “a cruel solution in search of a problem.”

Richardson told WHYY News he joined Neuberger’s complaint to protect Delaware’s federal education dollars.

“I want the people of Delaware aware that the funding is at risk if Delaware does not comply with the executive order from President Trump,” the senator said.

Richardson said he also knows of no transgender girls playing on Delaware girls’ teams, but wants to stop it from happening.

“I don’t want to see any woman lose opportunities to be able to compete fairly for scholarships or just honors for placing first in any sports competition and have it taken away by a male,” Richardson said.

The complaint, however, is puzzling to Mark Purpura, a lawyer and president of the Equality Delaware nonprofit that aims to protect the rights of LGBTQ residents.

Purpura said he’s astonished that a state legislator is “asking the federal government to terminate education funding for Delaware schools. That is a truly remarkable position to be taking, which would result in the closure of many public schools in Delaware.”

Purpura also said Trump’s “executive order is not the ultimate interpreter” of federal law — the courts are.

“I believe that the appropriate federal law interpretation of Title IX would be that if a school determines or a state determines that they want to protect transgender students against discrimination in extra-curricular activities, they have a compelling governmental interest in doing that,” Purpura said. “But I really think that this issue in large part is a distraction.”

By once again targeting transgender athletes, Purpura said, Sen. Richardson is “focused on something that’s divisive and is really to a large extent a non-issue in Delaware.”