Washington state voters will soon weigh in on a ballot measure to ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ school sports teams. The initiative is controversial, but national and local polling suggest it could have enough silent support to pass.
“People are with us, and they don’t wanna say it out loud,” said Hallie Herzberg, a spokesperson for Let’s Go Washington, the conservative-backed political action committee behind the proposed ban. “They don’t want to be villainized for it. They will support us, and they will stand up for girls, but they will do it in the safety of their own ballot.”
The measure would require students who want to join a girls’ sports team to undergo sex verification, either through a genital exam, a chromosome test, or a hormone test. This would be a departure from current state policy, which lets kids play on teams that align with their gender identity.
A majority of Americans (66%) support policies that force trans athletes to play on sports teams that “match their sex at birth,” according to polling that the Pew Research Center published last year. Pew’s data also shows that this opinion has grown in recent years, that Republicans are broadly united on the issue, and that Democrats are split.
In Washington state, which tends to vote for progressive leaders and policies, only limited local polling exists on this topic. But it indicates that voters are torn.
Polling conducted by Let’s Go Washington shows its initiative passing in November, with 56% of the vote in favor of banning trans girls from girls’ sports. That data, which has yet to be released publicly, shows approval from 73% of Republicans, 48% of Democrats, and 52% of Independents.
Polling from the state’s Democrats has been sparse on this issue, according to party spokesperson Stephen Reed.
“What we have seen from our allies is that this will probably be close,” Reed said of the trans athlete initiative. “This is not a slam dunk like some folks think it might be.”
Voters tend to support banning trans girls from competing with cisgender girls after they read the language used to describe the initiative as it will appear on the November ballot, according to Andrew Villeneuve, the founder of Northwest Progressive Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Redmond that has done some polling on the issue. Villeneuve did not release the results of this polling to KUOW but described it in broad strokes.
“If they do no prior research and they just open up their ballot to vote at their kitchen table … Washingtonians are poised to vote yes,” Villeneuve said. A “yes” vote on this measure means approving a ban on trans girls in girls’ sports.
But voters are far less likely to support the initiative when they have a more in-depth understanding of how it would work, Villeneuve said. Once they found out that genital exams could be required of all girls, for example, they were less likely to support the initiative, he said.
Reed, the spokesperson for state Democrats, said the party hasn’t focused as heavily on the sports initiative as it has on other ballot measures this year. Democrats are trying to defeat two other initiatives from Let’s Go Washington, especially the initiative that would overturn a new income tax on high earners. Reed said the fight over the so-called “millionaires tax” is “sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the room.”
Nationwide, more than half of states already have bans on the books that prevent trans girls from joining girls’ teams. The Trump administration has made it a priority to block trans women from participating in women’s sports and has ordered investigations into states and school districts that have gender-inclusive sports policies, including at least four districts in Washington state.
Fewer than 10 trans athletes participate in school sports across the state, according to an estimate from the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, which oversees school sports. Advocates who support trans girls playing girls’ sports say participating on teams that align with their gender identity can help kids make friends and build their self-esteem and teamwork skills.
Prominent Democrats in the state have spoken out against a ban.
Gov. Bob Ferguson last week urged voters to reject the initiative. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray also opposes itas do several U.S. House members for Washington, including Seattle’s Pramila Jayapal. Laurie Jinkins, speaker of the state House of Representatives, is also a critic.
But, for some voters who identify as Democrats, the issue of trans athletes isn’t clear cut.
“ I think that the progressive or liberal movement has maybe gone a little bit too far on several matters of gender identity,” said Andrew, a Democratic voter in Redmond who asked that we not use his last name for fear of being labeled anti-trans.
Andrew said that, while he supports trans rights and LGBTQ rights, sports participation is a different issue.
“Athletics is just kind of a special case where there are just sort of undeniable biological differences between men and women,” he said.
Though research into the physical advantages of trans girls in sports is mixed and ongoing, Andrew said he felt that allowing trans girls to play on girls’ teams “just seems unfair at face value.”
Some experts who spoke for this story said that, when it comes to messaging on the issue of trans athletes, Democrats are losing to Republicans.
“This is something that the right is just invested in bringing attention to and the left is focused elsewhere,” said Ari Drennen, founder of Pink and Blue Strategies, a political consulting firm that focuses on LGBTQ rights issues.
Since June of last year, social media accounts backing the initiative to ban trans girls from girl’s sports have drawn 29 times the engagement levels than accounts that oppose the measure, according to Drennen.
She also noted that so-called “celebrity” messengers who support the initiative, like conservative commentator Brandi Kruse, seem to wield more clout than celebrity messengers on the left, like former professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe. This also has impacted public opinion, Drennen said.
Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy at Third Way, a center-left national think tank, agrees that Democrats are on the back foot when it comes to trans girls in sports.
Putting an issue regarding trans rights on the ballot is a conservative “ploy” to turn out and energize the Republican vote in an otherwise down year, Erickson said.
“ There’s not that much else that the right can run on at this point, and they feel, rightly, that they have made Democrats uncomfortable on this, and that it unites their base and it divides ours,” Erickson said.
She noted that Democrats have taken too hard of a stance on this particular issue, or simply avoided speaking about it.
“ I would say that Democrats need to acknowledge that there need to be rules. Sports have rules across all kinds of things. Why wouldn’t they have rules about this?” Erickson said. “But then be clear that those rules don’t need to be the same in every circumstance, and this ban goes too far in applying rules that might be appropriate in some places to all sports in Washington state, and that isn’t something they support.”
Source: www.kuow.org
