At least one progressive advocacy group is exploring legal action over a ballot measure set to pass in Washington state that would ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports.
Gender Justice League, a Seattle-based LGBTQ advocacy group, told KUOW on Thursday that it may challenge the ban on privacy grounds, though the group has yet to formally announce a lawsuit.
“We are having active conversations with our partners and also evaluating what legal options are available to us. If there is an avenue, we will challenge this ballot measure in court on behalf of our members and our community and trans youth,” said Danni Askini, the group’s executive director.
She said Gender Justice League would challenge the measure, Initiative 638, based on a 2008 student privacy rights case that ruled that Washington schools requiring suspicionless urine testing of students was unconstitutional.
“We believe that the Washington constitution and the Supreme Court have been really clear that I-638 would go far beyond a random drug screening and invade all girls’ privacy,” Askini said, adding that the measure “sets a really chilling and disturbing precedent.”
Washington’s ban, which is set to go into effect on Dec. 3, the deadline for the Secretary of State to verify election results, currently has 57% of the vote. Though thousands of votes were left to tally on Thursday, the Associated Press called the race Wednesday evening.
The ban would require girls to obtain a genital exam, a hormone test, or a chromosome test to verify their birth sex before they could participate on a girls’ school sports team. It would be a philosophical shift for Washington state, which for nearly 20 years has allowed students to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
Other organizations that oppose the ban have not said whether they are pursuing legal action.
The ACLU of Washington spoke out about the passing of the ban, but did not announce any plans for a lawsuit.
“As an organization, we don’t speak about potential litigation,” a spokesperson for the group said in an email to KUOW.
In a blog post published Thursday, executive director Michele Storms called the ban “a devastating blow to our state’s history of inclusivity and belonging.”
“Laws that target transgender girls do nothing to support our youth; they only foster discrimination and bullying, and sow division,” Storms wrote.
Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, told KUOW on Wednesday that she was planning to fight the ban in court. But the party backed off that statement Thursday morning, telling KUOW it did not plan to litigate the issue.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, or WIAA, the organization that oversees school sports, wrote in a statement that it will continue to follow state law and is prepared to make “necessary changes” by Dec. 3.
“Implementation details, including updates to requirements with physicals, are undergoing legal review. Upon completed review, implementation details and updated forms will be provided to schools to help with compliance of new laws,” Sean Bessette, spokesperson for the WIAA wrote in a statement.
Brian Heywood, founder of Let’s Go Washington, the organization behind the ban has said he believes implementation will be simple.
“ If there's concerns about this confusion, it's because people are being purposefully obtuse and they're trying to make this into something it's not,” Heywood said.
Heywood said doctors should look at patient records to verify birth sex — something that is not written in the text of the ban — and said he did not believe implementation of the ban in 30 days would be difficult.
“All of these things go into MyChart,” Heywood said, referencing the electronic records system that physicians use. “So a doctor goes in, they've never met you before. They go and they open up the MyChart. They go, ‘Oh, she's a girl.’ They can check a box that says she's a girl. That's all that has to happen. For 50 years, doctors have been able to figure this out without anything complicated or messy.”
Earlier this year, KNKX and KUOW reached out to a number of organizations representing pediatricians and doctor’s offices for comments and got little response. Family medicine doctor Grace Shih told KNKX and KUOW earlier that she felt annual checkups were separate from the sports-specific physical exams required from schools and she would not feel comfortable using information from one type of appointment to satisfy another. “I do a separate exam,” said Shih, who opposes the ban.
Washington joins 26 other states around the country in having some sort of restriction on trans students playing sports. It would be one of the few Democratic-led states to have a ban in place, however.
Scott Greenstone and Cat Smith contributed reporting.
