Legislatures in left-leaning states have consistently rejected bills that would bar transgender student-athletes from participating in sports in line with their gender identity. But this November, the question of whether to exclude them will go straight to voters in two blue states, Colorado and Washington, and one swing state, Arizona.
The groups behind the ballot measures say they see energy behind the issue, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last week upholding similar laws in West Virginia and Idaho.
Although each pursues the same end goal, arguing the measures would maintain fairness in girls’ and women’s school sports, the three ballot initiatives differ slightly in wording and enforcement. LGBTQ+ rights groups have mobilized against them, arguing that enforcing the measures’ narrow definitions of gender could infringe on students’ privacy and threaten their safety, including by subjecting them to potentially invasive medical exams.
Colorado
The Colorado initiative would designate sports teams from kindergarten through college as strictly male or female based on students’ “biological reproductive systems.” Protect Kids Colorado, the organization behind the measure, collected more than 168,000 petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot, the secretary of state’s office said in March.
A second referendum from the group to ban transition-related surgeries for minors will also appear on the general election ballot in November. Such surgeries are already rare.
Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, a state LGBTQ+ rights group, said its members have been bracing for a bill or ballot measure to bar transgender student-athletes from teams that match their gender identity since President Donald Trump won back the White House in 2024.
The president campaigned heavily on banning transgender girls — whom he often refers to as “men” — from girls’ and women’s sports, capitalizing on public opinion polling that shows most Americans favor separating teams by sex assigned at birth. Last year, less than a month into his second term, Trump signed an executive order that declared the United States opposes “male competitive participation in women’s sports” and threatened funding for schools with trans-inclusive policies.
In March, Bridges and One Colorado launched “Families, Not Politics,” a coalition of LGBTQ+ and reproductive justice groups campaigning against the ballot measures on transgender athletes and gender-affirming care.
Bridges said she worries that adopting statewide restrictions for transgender student-athletes will send a negative message to gender-nonconforming young people and encourage gender-based bullying at school.
“Our community is just so disappointed that this initiative even made it onto the ballot, especially when it comes to younger kids,” she said.
Washington
In Washington, an initiative led by Let’s Go Washington, a nonpartisan political action committee founded by Brian Heywood, a conservative hedge fund manager, would similarly bar trans student-athletes from girls’ sports teams.
Hallie Herzberg, the group’s communications director, said voters appear energized on the issue. Let’s Go Washington received more small-dollar donations this year than in any other year since it was founded in 2022, she said.
Roughly 70 percent of voters surveyed by Let’s Go Washington last fall said they would support a ballot initiative to bar trans student-athletes from girls’ sports teams, Herzberg said, citing an internal poll shared with The 19th.
“We’re pretty confident that, when it comes to the ballot in November, people will make the choice to protect girls’ sports,” she said.
Unlike the Colorado measure, the Washington referendum applies only to girls’ teams. Students in kindergarten through high school would have to have their sex assigned at birth verified by a doctor — through genetic or hormone tests or an examination of their reproductive anatomy — before they could be considered eligible to participate in girls’ sports.
Herzberg said the initiative leverages existing Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) guidelines requiring student-athletes to undergo a routine physical examination before they can play school sports. The WIAA has allowed transgender students to compete in line with their gender identity since 2007.
Opponents of the ballot question have argued its proposed sex verification process could be easily exploited and violate both transgender and cisgender students’ privacy. There’s also the question of who would pay for genetic or hormone tests.
“It’s the most extreme measure of its kind in the country, in the mechanism by which it enforces the confirmation of sex assigned at birth,” said Libby Watson, campaign manager for No Hate in WA State, a coalition fighting the initiative. The group, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Education Association, is also rallying against a separate ballot measure related to parents’ rights.
Though optimistic that voters in Washington state will reject the sports-related initiative come November, Watson said her organization is already preparing legal arguments in case the measure becomes law. Kai Smith, an attorney with Pacifica Law, a Seattle law firm that has partnered with No Hate in WA State, said during a news conference in February that the initiative likely violates the state constitution’s equal rights amendment, in part because it does not apply equally to girls and boys.
Arizona
Arizona voters are also set to decide whether transgender students may participate on school sports teams aligning with their gender identity in November. The ballot question, introduced in December by state Rep. Selina Bliss, a Republican representing a conservative stronghold in western Arizona, would effectively restore a 2022 state law limiting transgender students’ participation in school sports that a federal appeals court blocked in 2024.
Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has declined to defend the law in court.
Bliss said in December that the ballot initiative, if successful, would give cisgender female student-athletes and their families “confidence that the rules will not shift again in court.” After the Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws, Bliss wrote on social media that Arizona’s effort is “even more critical than ever.”
Arizona House Republicans voted overwhelmingly in February to approve Bliss’ legislative referral, the Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona Act, which cleared the state Senate early last month. The measure officially qualified for the general election ballot on June 12.
Similar to the 2022 state law on which it is based, the November ballot proposal would require public and qualifying private schools in Arizona to designate kindergarten through 12th grade sports teams as “male,” “female” or “coeducational” based on participating students’ “biological status at birth.” It would also expand the scope of the previous law by requiring schools to block transgender students from using restrooms, locker rooms and other spaces “integral to athletic engagement” that align with their gender identity, an addition that some opponents argue violates the state’s constitution.
A lawsuit filed late last month by two Arizona pastors and Will of the People, a liberal political action committee, claims the proposal violates a requirement that ballot measures in Arizona address only a single subject to avoid confusing voters or forcing them to support an initiative they do not entirely agree with. The complaint, filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, argues the ballot measure’s title is “misleading to the point of fraud,” and requests that the initiative be declared unconstitutional and removed from the November ballot altogether.
Oral arguments in the case are slated for July 16.
Other states
A similar ballot measure has already been removed in Maine. In May, Shenna Bellows, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, invalidated more than 12,000 signatures on a petition submitted by Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine, an organization leading a campaign to put a ban on transgender student-athletes in girls’ sports before voters in November. A review of the petition found issues including forged and duplicated signatures, Bellows’ office said.
A Maine Superior Court judge upheld Bellows’ decision to block the referendum, but Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine appealed. They would need a decision from the state supreme court by August 25 for the referendum to appear on the November ballot.
Separately, an out-of-state petition circulator and two Maine voters sued Bellows in federal court last week.
Bellows’ office declined to comment.
An effort to place a similar ballot question before voters in Nebraska is ongoing. Fairness for Girls, the organization behind the proposed referendum, said late last month that it had collected more than 211,000 signatures, which the secretary of state’s office still needs to verify before the measure can officially qualify for the November election.
In June, backers of a Nevada initiative to restrict transgender athletes’ participation withdrew their petition, citing legal delays that had kept them from meeting the June 24 deadline. Nevada’s Supreme Court had previously ruled the ballot question legally sound.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo said he plans to ask Nevada’s Democrat-controlled legislature to take up the issue when it reconvenes in February. He said in a statement on social media, “If lawmakers refuse to do the right thing, we will take the court approved language directly to voters in 2028.”
Lombardo’s promise of a future ballot measure signals what may become a broader trend, particularly in states that have tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation restricting transgender rights, said Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project.
“Ballot initiatives are going to be a big part of the politics moving forward,” he said, though much of what to expect on referendums related to transgender rights will depend on how such measures fare this fall.
“Either way, we will expect to see more ballot measures,” he said.
