Deep-blue Washington State passes ballot initiative banning trans girls from sports

Voters in deep-blue Washington State, home to some of the most robust anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination protections in the country, have passed a ballot initiative that bars transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports teams.The controversial statute will require verification of sex from a health care provider in order for a student to participate in female athletic categories.The Associated Press projected the passage at 9:14 p.m. on November 4, with 57 percent of voters supporting the measure and 43 percent opposing it at the time of the call. Sixty-eight percent of the estimated vote had been counted at the time the projection was made.Related: Washington ballot measure could force all girls to have genital inspections to play sportsSupported by the political action committee Let’s Go Washington (LGW), which also worked to get a measure on the ballot calling for the repeal of tax on income over $1 million, Initiative 638 will restrict participation in women’s interscholastic only to athletes who had been assigned female at birth when it goes into effect in December, thirty days after the election.Advocates on both sides of the measure had signaled that the measure stood a strong chance of passing, despite Washington’s long-cemented progressive reputation, having voted for Democratic presidents in every election since 1988. In October, LGW had previewed internal polling suggesting 56% support and state Democratic spokesperson Stephen Reed had told KUOW that it would “probably be close.”“This is not a slam dunk like some folks think it might be,” Reed warned.The language of the ballot initiative framed the process for barring trans athletes as a matter of using the “documentation of [a] student’s sex assigned at birth” from a “routine physical examination” required by “existing Washington state law and school district policies.”Physicians and LGBTQ+ advocates alike raised serious issues with that framing in the runup to the election.