Cassidy Carlyle was in the seventh grade when she had to change in the same locker room as a transgender student, she said.
Six years ago, in gym class at Presque Island Middle School in northern Maine, she said she would step into the locker room and find a biological man who would change alongside her and other girls.
She claims that the administrator told her there was a risk of delaying her class if she tried to avoid changes with trans students.
“It was my first experience knowing that something is really not right, but I don't know what to do with it,” Carlisle told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. Fox News Digital reached Presque Isle Middle School for comment.
Gender identity was first included in the Maine Human Rights Act as part of the 2005 definition of sexual orientation.
In 2021, the law was amended to join other protected classes such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, race, color, religion, and add gender identity as protected classes.
The law specifically states that denying equal opportunities for athletic programs is educational discrimination.
Transgender students claim to be in the girl's locker room for about a week before mysteriously disappearing. However, memories of experience stuck to her.
Memories were particularly persistent with her in her third year of high school.
It was an athlete she was familiar with. She has already lost to trans athletes in cross-country competitions for the past few years.
When her father told her she had to play against the athlete again on skiing, Carlisle didn't believe it was happening.
“I recall, 'Yeah, that's just what I heard on the news…it's not going to happen to me,” Cassidy recalls.
But that happened to her.
“The defeat that comes with it in that moment is heartbreaking,” Carlisle said. “I'm shocked in a way. I didn't believe it…I didn't think it was happening to me.”
As a child, Carlisle left her coed hockey team, especially as she felt she could not “catch up” with the boys.
After that, even after committing to a girl-only sport, she was unable to escape the physical disadvantages that come with biological men.
Besides the uncertainty of the situation, Carlisle felt unable to talk about it.
“I stayed silent for a while,” Carlisle said. “It's very hard to say if you don't have a platform to do that. … Backlash is a big thing. I'm a high school student. High school students don't hurt or scream at people, or make average comments to people.
All she could do was vote in the November election. As a first-time voter, she voted on the frontline on issues of women's sports trans athletes.
a National exit survey What the US Legislative Action Committee did for women involved found that 70% of moderate voters were important to them, “opposition between Donald Trump girls and men playing women's sports and transgender boys and men using girls and women's bathrooms.”
And 6% said it was the most important question of all, and 44% said it was “very important.”
When Republican Maine Sen. Laurel Libby spoke out earlier this year to another trans athlete who won the women's pole vault competition in February, Carlisle suddenly got the opportunity to influence the issue.
It has identified Libby's social media post trans athletes as they thrust the state into an ongoing culture war.
After Trump signed an executive order to address the issue on February 5th, it went to zero due to a nationwide fight over issues put into effect by the Trump administration against several Democrat-controlled states, such as Maine.
Thousands of people in Maine suddenly spoke out against state laws that allow transportation to women's sports and locker rooms, all with the president's support.
That's where Carlisle joined.
On February 27, Carlisle traveled to the White House with several other current and former female athletes affected by transinclusion, including Payton McNab and Serena Saul. There, they met with Attorney General Pam Bondi and several other state attorney generals and shared their stories.
Carlisle couldn't help but realize he was away from the White House that day.
“Our AG was not there from our state,” Carlisle said.
So, when Carlisle returned to her condition, she took matters into her own hands.
Last weekend, she gave a speech in front of the Maine Capitol, speaking to hundreds of other residents to protest Gov. Janet Mills and protest the continued availability of women's sports trans athletes.
This was the second protest against Mills outside the Capitol, a month after the Mills rally on March 1.
The Trump administration has taken aggressive steps to ensure that the nation sticks to the wishes of Carlisle and other residents who want women to be protected from trans-inclusion.
On March 17, the Department of Health and Human Services' Civil Rights Office (OCR) announced that if they find the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principal Association and Greeley High School could continue transporting to women's sports in violation of Title IX.
In the announcement, the department said Maine has 10 days to amend its policy through a contract signed for appropriate action or a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Trump has already shown his willingness to cut federal funds to implement these policies.
He suspended $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania and temporarily suspended funding to the University of Maine system last week.
The deadlines that the rest of Maine follow will appear within a week.
“We really hope that Maine is compliant because our schools need federal funds, and there's no risk of losing that,” Carlisle said. “Losing that federal funding would really hurt our state, so I hope our government can put it together.”
