How Washington state’s sports ballot measure will impact all girls

Washington state is asking voters to decide a controversial ballot measure this November: Initiative Six-Three-Eight would restrict transgender girls from playing school sports, but with a striking requirement. Unlike similar initiatives elsewhere, it applies only to girls' athletics and mandates that every girl in kindergarten through twelfth grade have her sex verified by a doctor — through genetic or hormone testing, or physical examination — to play. Per The 19th, it's the most extreme measure of its kind. Opponents worry it will retraumatize sexual assault survivors and disadvantage girls without health insurance or a regular physician. They also point out the scope: Washington's high school sports association is aware of roughly ten transgender students competing across the state's more than two hundred thousand student-athletes. Supporters frame the requirement as restoring an earlier standard for sports physicals, but the initiative gathered over four hundred forty thousand signatures — far more than the three hundred thousand needed to qualify.

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