gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
A Republican Maine state representative has filed a lawsuit alleging the state’s House speaker and other Democrats violated her First Amendment rights and disenfranchised her constituents by censuring her last month and barring from speaking or voting on the House floor.
State Rep. Laurel Libby has been an outspoken critic of Maine’s state policy allowing transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports.
Libby recently posted on social media to draw attention to the Maine high school girls’ indoor track and field state championship, where a student who competed as a boy last year but now identifies as transgender took first place in girls’ pole vault. That first-place finish propelled the student’s team to win the championship by a single point.
Libby’s post included the student’s name and photographs. While Libby was criticized for naming the student, her lawsuit notes, “The Championship was a public event, was streamed online, and the names, schools and photographs of the winners were posted publicly.”
The post received national attention and prompted a heated exchange between Democratic Maine Gov. Jill Mills and President Donald Trump over transgender athletes. Mills told the president “See you in court” after he said he would deny federal funding to the state if it refused to comply with his executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Three federal agencies have also launched investigations into the Maine Department of Education and its compliance with Title IX.
“I had no idea my post would go viral like it did, but it did because it so inherently unfair to see a young man on a podium that a Maine girl deserved to be standing on,” Libby told CNN in an interview.
After Libby’s post, the Democratic-controlled Maine House voted along party lines 75-70 to censure Libby, declaring her post “reprehensible” and “incompatible with her duty and responsibilities as a member of the House.”
The censure required her to apologize, but she refused, so the House prohibited her from speaking or voting on the House floor for the rest of her term.
“It’s so obvious my censure is retaliation because they do not want to have a debate about the real issue, which is biological males participating in girls’ sports,” Libby said.
Libby, who represents 9,000 constituents, alleges that the censure violates her First Amendment rights as well as the Equal Protection, Due Process, and Guarantee Clauses of the US Constitution. She is asking the court for injunctive relief that would allow her to continue her duties.
A spokeswoman for Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
