Lawsuit Challenges Maine Transgender Athlete Ballot Measure
LGBTQ advocates challenge signatures for a referendum that would bar transgender athletes from school teams based on their birth certificate.
A lawsuit has been filed challenging a proposed referendum that would bar transgender athletes from competing on public school teams based on the sex listed on their original birth certificate.
The measure, slated to appear on the ballot this fall, would also require public schools to maintain sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing spaces based on students’ birth sex, and allow students who believe they were denied athletic opportunities by a transgender competitor to sue for damages.
But three Maine residents filed suit, claiming supporters of the referendum failed to gather enough valid signatures from registered voters to qualify the measure for the ballot. In their complaint, they say they identified hundreds of duplicate signatures and hundreds more lacking required date information. They also allege that some signatures came from unregistered voters or omitted required residence information.
The Secretary of State’s Office said in March that 71,033 signatures were valid — exceeding the 67,682 required to qualify the referendum for the ballot, equal to 10% of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.
The lawsuit argues that at least 7,000 additional signatures should have been deemed invalid due to missing required information or duplicate entries. That would be on top of the 8,659 signatures — out of 79,692 submitted — that the Secretary of State’s Office had already rejected.
The Maine Attorney General’s Office, which represents Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, argues that many of the lawsuit’s claims should be rejected, while acknowledging that up to 3,014 signatures initially deemed valid may need to be invalidated, according to the Portland Press Herald.
In court filings, Bellows acknowledges that some additional signatures may have been invalid, but not enough to remove the measure from the ballot.
At a hearing in Cumberland County Superior Court, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Bolton argued that opponents’ claims were legally flawed and that, even if more than 3,000 additional signatures were invalidated, the referendum would still exceed the threshold by more than 300 signatures.
“Several of these challenges fail as a matter of law, and the court should reject these challenges,” Bolton said, according to Portland CBS affiliate WGME. “Validating a petition containing nearly 80,000 signatures in the extremely compressed timeframe allowed by statute makes some amount of error inevitable.”
The group that circulated the petition, Protect Girls Sports in Maine, says it agrees with Bellows’ decision to certify the referendum and hopes the court will rule in its favor.
“And when I say rule on it, the court has a couple of options,” Tim Woodcock, who represents Protect Girls Sports in Maine, told WGME. “It could rule on the merits. Or it could send the matter back to the secretary of state to evaluate some of the challenges.”
Woodcock said his clients are “confident that the petition-gathering process was well done,” pushing back on claims that petition circulators left papers unattended in violation of state law or that some signatures appeared “suspicious” because they shared similar handwriting.
“We’re confident that in the end, we believe that the petition signatures that were gathered were done in sufficient number to withstand this challenge,” Woodcock said.
If the court sides with the Attorney General’s Office, the measure will appear on the November general election ballot, where it must win a majority to pass. Even if it does, the measure could face additional legal challenges before taking effect, as the Maine Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.
As written, the ballot question reads: “Do you want to change civil rights and education laws to require public schools to restrict access to bathrooms and sports based on the gender on the child’s original birth certificate and allow students to sue the schools?”
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Proponents of the referendum have criticized Bellows, who is running in the Democratic primary for governor, over the wording of the question, which they say is biased and misleading and intended to sway voters to reject the measure.
“@shennabellows released wording for the ballot question re: protecting girls’ sports & spaces.. Naturally, it doesn’t reference protecting girls’ sports and spaces,” State Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) wrote on X.
“[Bellows] has a tendency to phrase ballot questions so voters must agree to a negative statement,” an X user replied to Libby’s post. “Most people initially read negative language and want to disagree with it. It is disingenuous to write the question this way to manipulate voters into giving you your desired outcome.”
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and the Maine Principals’ Association say there are only two transgender high school athletes competing statewide, reports them,
The referendum was reportedly funded by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, who lives in Illinois, according to the Maine Beacon. The outlet reports that Uihlein, a shipping supply billionaire and Schlitz Brewing heir, donated $800,000 to “Safeguard Girls Sports,” the ballot question committee behind the measure.
“This isn’t a homegrown effort,” Destie Hohman Sprague, of the Maine Women’s Lobby, told the Beacon. “We really want Mainers to understand that this is not about sports, it’s about a national extremist attempt to take over Maine politics and drive the conversation in November.”
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