The Maine House of Representatives censured Rep. Laurel Libby on Tuesday night for a recent post on social media that said a transgender high school athlete won a girls’ competitive event.
The censure motion was passed by the Maine House on Tuesday night by a vote of 75 to 70. Speaker Ryan Fecteau led the Democrats who voted for it. Because she didn’t say sorry, Libby can’t speak or vote in the house again until she does.
In an interview with Fox News Digital after the vote, Libby said she has no plans to say sorry for her recent post.
Fecteau told Libby that the House would take a break while she thought about her apology after the censure had been decided.
“I told him, ‘We do not need to take ease’ as I was going to continue speaking up for Maine girls,” she said.
In her post from last Sunday, Libby said that a transgender track and field athlete had won first place at a Maine girls’ pole vault event after participating as a boy the year before. The main reason the Maine House of Representatives punished Libby was because she shared a picture of a child and gave the child’s name.
“It’s a remarkable double standard as there are public photos of this individual in many places, on social media and even some posted by his school, and so yes, this post went viral, but this was an individual who participated in a public event, who publicly stood on a podium and accepted a championship medal that rightfully belonged to the girls standing on the second-place spot,” Libby told us.
Matt Moonen, the majority leader of the House, spoke out against Libby in a speech on the House floor.
“She has irreparably broken the trust that has been placed in her as an elected official serving in this House of Representatives,” said Moonen. “This institution and all of Maine deserve better.”
Billy Bob Faulkingham, the House Minority Leader, spoke out against the reprimand. He said that the state legislature’s ethics code doesn’t talk about what members write online.
Libby came to the house floor on Tuesday with a seven-page speech ready to go about why it’s important to keep transgender people out of girls’ and women’s sports. Throughout the night, though, her microphone was always off when she was trying to give that speech.
Libby said, “From the first sentence, I couldn’t get a word out before the other side shut me down.” She also said that she had never seen anything like that happen in her time in the Maine senate.
After the hearing, Libby put up a video of herself making the speech on Facebook.
Libby says she doesn’t plan to say sorry, but she does have another plan to get back her right to vote and talk, but she didn’t say what that plan was.
Because of this, Maine Republicans and Libby’s constituents will miss out on a vote and a chance to speak out on other problems in the state’s government during this busy month.
Libby recently put forward a bill to give more Maine residents access to mental health services. She will no longer be able to help get this bill passed. The Maine House will vote on the next budget in a few weeks, but Libby will not be able to vote on that either.
“It’s look like I will not be able to speak on that or vote on that,” she stated.
After Maine said it would not follow President Trump’s recent “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order, Libby’s story about the trans athlete sparked national talk and coverage of the state’s policy on trans inclusion.
Trump then told a group of governors at the White House last Thursday that he would cut the state’s funding because it wouldn’t do what he said.
In response, Mills’ office said in a statement on Friday that they would sue the Trump administration if it cut off government funding to the state. Then, Trump and Mills got into a public fight at the White House during a meeting of governors from both parties.
A few hours after that conversation, the U.S. Department of Education said it would be looking into the state for possible Title IX violations and letting transgender athletes participate in girls’ sports.
Because people are worried about safety, police have since been sent to the high school where the trans athlete Libby named in her Facebook post goes.
A recent poll by the New York Times and Ipsos found that most Americans, including most Democrats, don’t think transgender players should be able to play women’s sports.
79% of the 2,128 people who answered said that biological guys who think they are women shouldn’t be able to play women’s sports. There were 1,025 people who said they were Democrats or leaning Democratic, and 67% of them said transgender sports shouldn’t be able to compete with women.
Libby has her own idea about why Democratic politicians in her state and across the country are fighting so hard to keep transgender girls in girls’ sports, even though most Americans and even most Democrats are against it.
“I think Maine Democrats’ stance is, they haven’t gone hard enough, and they need to dig in,” she said.
However, she thinks that Democrats’ efforts to stick to their current position, which led to their censure on Tuesday night, will hurt them in the long run.
“I think this was a tremendous misstep on the part of the Democrats, and they are completely misjudging this issue, and they do not understand how vigorously Maine people disagree with them on this policy, and they will at some point regret this action from tonight,” she added.
