Transgender athlete bans set to reach the ballot box for the first time

Transgender athletes are on the ballot in four states this November in efforts to expand existing bans or create new ones against their participation in school sports.

Voters in Arizona, Nebraska, Colorado and Washington will make their call on the issue, a change of strategy for anti-trans measures, which have been put on the books in 27 states through either legislation or state agency action.

“These four states are part of a larger set of five states that are facing anti-trans ballot measures this fall, and this will be the first year that voters are voting on anti-transgender policy at the ballot box directly. This is part of a broader and coordinated campaign targeting transgender people and their rights for many years now,” said Logan Casey, director of policy research at Movement Advancement Project.

Arizona and Nebraska already have some restrictions on transgender athletes on the books, but the initiatives would expand those rules in Arizona and cement the ban in the state constitution in Nebraska.

In Colorado and Washington, the ballot initiatives would create those states’ first broad restrictions on transgender athletes. Colorado and Missouri also have ballot measures aimed at banning gender transition surgeries for minors.

Most of the states with existing anti-transgender policies are controlled by Republicans, but places such as Colorado and Washington could offer a tougher test.

“They’ve sort of hit an upper limit on how many states are likely to adopt this kind of policy through the legislature, and so in states like Colorado and Washington, where they’re seeing a sports measure proposed, some of that is a tactical shift where they’ve introduced these bills in the legislature, they’ve not been successful at passing it through the legislature and so now they’re pivoting to put the measure before the public,” Casey said.

And proponents of these measures aren’t shy about the tactic, pointing to polling that shows a majority of Americans agree with restrictions for transgender athletes.

A Gallup poll released in 2025 showed roughly two-thirds of those surveyed believe trans athletes should have to play on teams that match their sex at birth. Seventy-one percent of independents and 41 percent of Democrats agreed with the statement.

“This is really not a partisan issue,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel at Independent Women’s Forum.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that boys should not participate in girls sports. So, when the state’s elected representatives can’t get a law passed, I think that these states that are having these ballot initiatives on the ballot in November is a great way to be able to try and protect girls sports,” Parlato added.

Opponents say ballot initiatives like these make it seem like the controversy around trans athletes is a much bigger issue than it actually is.

While no official count is available, it is estimated that less than 1 percent of athletes in high school are transgender.

“The information on these initiatives are so misleading,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center of LGBTQ Rights.

“We’re talking about a very tiny number of transgender girls who want to play or just be given a chance to try out for and perhaps play on a girls team. It makes it sound like there’s no rules or restrictions whatsoever. It makes it sound like there’s some sort of systemic unfairness that’s happening. It’s just none of that is true at all. It’s just not happening,” Minter added.

The efforts to restrict trans athletes from girls and women’s sports teams have accelerated since 2020 and become a favorite issue for the Trump administration, which has threatened to cut funding from states that disagree and launched more than a dozen investigations into schools over their transgender athlete policies.

In a deal cut with the University of Pennsylvania, the school agreed to ban transgender athletes in exchange for the release of federal funds.

“Every time we allow a male to participate in an athletic competition in the female division, that takes away the opportunities that Title IX was enacted to protect,” Parlato said. “We’re not trying to tell anybody they can’t participate in sports, certainly not. Every individual has obviously the opportunity to participate if that’s what they want to do, you just participate in your correct division, which is biological sex.”

While the ballot initiatives are a new front for the transgender athlete fight, they are old hat for anti-LGBTQ measures.

In 2004, 13 states had anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot — and all of them passed.

“But marriage equality eventually became the law of the land,” Casey said. “If there’s an instance where any one of these states that we lose, it’s important to remember that we’ve been here as a community before, and that’s not the end of the fight.”