Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) sued President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi Tuesday after the administration threatened the state’s federal funding over its refusal to implement an executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. 

Bondi had warned the state to comply with Trump’s Feb. 4 order in a letter that month and said last week while announcing a civil lawsuit against Maine over its noncompliance that California and Minnesota are the “top two” states that should also “be on notice.”

The White House has argued that Title IX, the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination, prevents transgender students from competing in girls’ sports, the opposite of the position held by the Biden administration.

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the Trump administration to sue Minnesota,” Ellison said Tuesday at a press conference at the state capitol in St. Paul. “Today, Minnesota is suing him and his administration because we will not participate in this shameful bullying.” 

Ellison’s lawsuit, filed in Minnesota district court, also challenges one of Trump’s day-one executive orders proclaiming the U.S. recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and broadly preventing government funds from being spent on what his administration calls “gender ideology.” 

The orders, Ellison said Tuesday, violate the U.S. Constitution and Title IX, which he said includes gender identity protections. “The administration is wrong about the law,” he said. 

The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately return requests for comment. 

In February, Ellison wrote in an opinion that implementing Trump’s order on transgender athletes would violate the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. 

The president’s order “does not have the force of law and therefore does not preempt any aspect of Minnesota law,” Ellison wrote in the opinion, which is legally binding. Educational institutions and the Minnesota State High School League, the organization governing interscholastic activities in the state, would violate the state’s anti-discrimination law “by prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in extracurricular activities according to their gender identity,” he wrote. 

Ellison in Tuesday’s lawsuit argued that letters sent in February and April by Bondi and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon ordering Minnesota to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports violate the Administrative Procedure Act because they are “arbitrary and capricious” and conflict with Title IX. 

“They want to make all of us pay because we welcome all children and want them to be their whole selves,” Ellison said during Tuesday’s news conference. “These are bullying, tactics, plain and simple. I’ve been around my share of bullies in my life, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t give them an inch.” 

Ellison is involved in several other lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders, including one filed jointly with attorneys general from Colorado, Washington state and Oregon in February against an order to cut federal support for gender-affirming care for trans youth. That order is temporarily blocked under orders from two federal judges. 

Speaking at Tuesday’s press conference, Minnesota Rep. Leigh Finke (D), the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker, said the orders are part of the administration’s broader campaign to roll back the rights of trans people and deny that they exist. 

“Here, we do not bend to cruelty,” Finke said. “We do not bow to bullying or bigotry. We lead with love and follow the law. We will continue to build a state that honors and affirms the lives of all. We will continue to build a state that honors and affirms the lives of all. We have chosen love, we have chosen justice, and we continue to choose freedom, now and always.”