AUGUSTA (LifeSiteNews) — The Maine Secretary of State’s Office has released the text of a proposed ballot question to limit school restrooms and athletic teams to actual members of a designated sex, which is slated to be voted on this fall.
Last month, Maine Democrat Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced that grassroots advocacy group Protect Girls Sports in Maine (PGSM) had collected enough signatures for the referendum to make the fall midterm ballot.
“Our act requires schools to designate athletic teams by sex: male, female, and co-ed. Every student has an opportunity to compete. Nobody is excluded. Sports are organized fairly and safely for everyone,” PGSM says. “Private facilities like bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers will be designated by sex. Females and males both deserve privacy and safety in their own spaces — and this act guarantees it.”
“When the bureaucrats in Augusta refused to act, the citizens of Maine stepped up,” the group adds. “Now, this question goes directly to the voters and will be decided by a majority of Mainers, not by politicians.”
On Tuesday, Bellows’s office released the draft of the full ballot question, which asks, “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?”
April 7 began a 30-day period for the public to submit formal questions and comments about the wording, which will be considered before a final draft to appear on the ballot is determined.
The proposal is not a state constitutional amendment, but rather a citizen-initiated piece of legislation. If approved in November, the Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine Act will have the force of any other normal state law, simply enacted without the legislature or governor.
Inclusion of gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted by leftists as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone” use; therefore, “the advantage to [gender-confused men] afforded by the [previous International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, which found that more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
In America since the 1980s, more than 1,941 gold medals in female events that would have gone to female athletes have instead been claimed by men identifying as “transgender women,” and along with them more than $493,173 in prize money across more than 10,067 amateur and professional events, according to data compiled by He Cheated and reviewed by Concerned Women for America.
Last year, Maine was thrust into the spotlight of the issue when President Donald Trump told Gov. Janet Mills at a White House event, “you better comply” with his executive order requiring school athletic programs to limit female-specific teams to real females, “because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.”
His Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights subsequently opened an investigation into Maine’s compliance with the administration’s policy regarding Title IX, citing the case of a “transgender” pole vaulter who gained a competitive advantage by switching to the girls’ team. The federal lawsuit against Maine on the matter is set to go to trial this month.