Maine Rep. Laurel Libby was barred from speaking and voting on the House floor after posting about a transgender high school athlete. She refused to apologize and sued; the U.S. Supreme Court later ordered her votes to be counted while the case proceeded, and lawmakers ultimately rescinded the restrictions.
In February 2025, Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican from Auburn, posted on Facebook about a transgender student who won the girls’ pole vault at a Maine high school meet. The post identified the minor and used side‑by‑side images that contrasted the athlete’s prior participation in boys’ competition with a first‑place finish in the girls’ event. A Boston Globe opinion column described the post as showing the student on a boys’ fifth‑place podium two years earlier and then on a girls’ first‑place podium this year. The runner‑up, Freeport senior Kessa Benner, later wrote in the Portland Press Herald that her “dream was shattered,” while avoiding personal attacks on the winner.
House Democratic leaders said the post violated the chamber’s ethics and risked the student’s welfare. Speaker Ryan Fecteau asked Libby to remove the post; after she declined and refused to apologize, the House voted 75–70 in late February to censure her, according to Maine Morning Star. Fecteau then enforced House Rule 401(11), which bars a member found in breach of House rules from voting or speaking on the floor until the member has “made satisfaction.”
Libby sued Speaker Fecteau and the House clerk in federal court, arguing the sanction violated her First Amendment rights and disenfranchised her district. A U.S. district judge and later the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals initially declined to grant her emergency relief. On May 20, 2025, however, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order restoring Libby’s voting rights while the litigation continued; Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “This decision restores the voice of 9,000 Mainers who were wrongly silenced,” Libby said that day, according to the Bangor Daily News.
While the high court’s order was temporary and did not resolve the underlying legal dispute, the Maine House later adopted a resolution near the end of the session rescinding the voting and speaking restrictions. In July, with no limits remaining, Libby asked the 1st Circuit to dismiss her appeal as moot, Maine Public reported.
Libby has framed the episode as part of a broader free‑speech debate. In a Daily Wire op‑ed, she wrote that she was “stripped of [her] right to speak for the people of Maine” for “highlighting biological differences between boys and girls,” and recounted telling her children after the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk that she would not stop speaking out. She also contrasted the episode with a 2021 dispute, when House leaders stripped seven lawmakers, including her, of committee assignments after they entered the State House without masks following the lifting of the statewide mandate; in that op‑ed, she said she later wore a face shield to continue voting, a decision she now regrets.
What remains uncontested is the sequence: Libby’s post drew widespread attention; the House censured her and, under its rules, barred her from floor debate and voting unless she apologized; lower courts denied immediate relief; the U.S. Supreme Court restored her vote on an emergency basis; and the House ultimately rescinded the restrictions, leading to the case’s effective end for now.