MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over two executive orders Attorney General Keith Ellison said amount to “bullying” trans children, Ellison announced Thursday.

At a news conference in his office, Ellison said the lawsuit was a response to multiple threats by the Trump administration to withhold federal funding if Minnesota did not comply executive orders issued in the first days of Trump’s administration.

The orders attempt to ban trans children from school sports and define two sexes — male and female — that are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Ellison called the Trump administration’s actions “bullying tactics — plain and simple."

“We will not let a small group of vulnerable children, who are only trying to be healthy and to live their lives, be demonized,” Ellison said.

Ellison announced the lawsuit from his office in Minnesota Capitol, joined by parents of a trans child, a physician who treats trans kids and Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who was the first trans person elected to the Minnesota Legislature.

Kelsey Leonardsmith, a physician and professor of family medicine, said trans children she treats are quitting sports and internalizing damaging messages about themselves.

“Now it’s not just classmates and the small-minded adults in their communities,” Leonardsmith said. “My patients are being bullied by the president of the United States.”

Minnesota’s lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, claims Trump’s executive order usurps Congress’s role to legislate and control federal spending. It also argues the president’s actions violate Title IX, which protects students from discrimination on the basis of sex, and violate the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Ellison, a Democrat, has been on the forefront of the legal fight against the Trump administration, joining lawsuits concerning everything from funding for education and renewable energy to trying to halt the firings of probationary federal workers.

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