Christian Wade
The Center Square

Backers of a proposal to ban transgender athletes from playing girls sports in Maine say they have cleared a major hurdle to put the issue before voters in the November 2026 state election. 

The Committee to Protect Girls Sports in Maine, the group behind the initiative, announced Monday, Febuary 2 that it has turned in more than the 67,682 signatures needed to get onto the November 3 ballot. 

"This is historic," Leyland Streiff, lead petitioner for the ballot question, said at a press briefing. "Not only will our initiative become the only citizen-led issue to appear on the 2026 Maine ballot, but we will likely be the first state where voters can protect female sports at the ballot box this November. We will pave the way for the rest of this nation."

Streiff and other backers of the plan say the state's leadership is out of touch with what voters want and say the proposal is a "common-sense" approach to dealing with the issue of transgender-identifying athletes playing girls' sports. 

"Our citizens' initiative designates competitive sports in schools by sex: male, female, co-ed," Streiff said in his remarks. "It’s not more complicated than that. This is inclusive, safe, and fair. Everybody gets to play sports."

The proposal, if approved by voters, would require public schools and the Maine Principals' Association to designate interscholastic or competitive teams for males or for females or as co-ed. Only athletes who are females would be allowed to compete on girls' teams. Public schools would also be required to maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers for boys and for girls.

Maine has become a focal point in the national debate over transgender athletes in female sports since a confrontation between Governor Janet Mills and President Donald Trump, who has vowed to withhold federal funding from any states that fail to comply with his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports" executive order. Mills, a Democrat, has refused to comply with Trump's directive.

The state is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Education's civil rights division that faults Maine's education policy allowing transgender-identifying male athletes to participate in girls' sports, claiming it violates Title IX, a 1972 law that forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also frozen funding to the state over the issue, and a referral has been made to the U.S. Department of Justice over ongoing participation by transgender-identifying males in girls' sports in the state. The state is challenging the funding withdrawal in court. 

Meanwhile, the Maine Human Rights Commission is suing five school districts that banned transgender-identifying students from playing sports and using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity as opposed to their sex.

Pro-transgender and civil rights groups previously announced that they have formed a coalition to oppose the Maine ballot question. They claim it would increase bullying and harassment of transgender-identifying students and cost local schools millions of dollars for construction and litigation. They also say the initiative is being funded by wealthy out-of-state donors seeking to impose a conservative agenda on the state.

"This attempt at a ballot initiative is not just a threat to students: it’s a threat to the way life should be in Maine," the coalition said in a recent written statement. "Our organizations remain steadfast in our focus on protecting the rights and dignity of all Mainers, and will not be distracted by a national political agenda that is at odds with our Maine values."