While the US Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state bans on trans athletes playing girls’ sports, a move that LGBTQ+ advocates say will lead to “baseless discrimination,”Arizona leaders are fighting to protect some of those students at the local level.
Last week, Valley ministers and advocacy groups announced a lawsuit to challenge a new Republican-led ballot resolution–House Concurrent Resolution 2003–the “Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona Act,” from landing on the November ballot.
The measure, introduced by Republican state Rep. Selina Bliss (R–Prescott) would prohibit transgender students from participating in sports teams that are not aligned with their assigned sex at birth.
Arizona state law already bars students born biologically male from joining girls sports teams, but the new ballot measure explicitly restricts transgender students from using locker rooms, bathrooms, or showers that align with their gender identity.
The plaintiffs say the measure violates state rules that say ballot measures must address only one subject, because the proposal targets both student athletes and access to school facilities like restrooms. They also argue the title, “Protect Girls’ Sports,” is misleading, as it fails to mention that the law would affect bathrooms for all students, not just athletes.
The lawsuit asks the Maricopa County Superior Court to declare HCR2003 unconstitutional and block it from the November ballot. If the lawsuit fails and the measure is approved by voters, it would go into effect Jan. 1, 2027.
Rev. Sarah Oglesby-Dunegan, a minister at Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation and one of the plaintiffs, criticized the measure as a “distraction.”
“Scapegoating trans kids is a distraction,” Oglesby-Dunegan said. “But it is also a life-snatching distraction, because when we decide to limit human flourishing to decide who gets access to belonging and human rights and who doesn’t, we are ultimately paving the way for any of us to lose access to the things that we need to be whole and healthy, beginning with trans kids who just want to be kids.”
Joel Edman, strategic initiatives director for Progress Arizona, a progressive advocacy group, called the measure an “invasion of privacy” that could subject children to gender checks or force schools to keep track of birth certificates.
“I don’t think we need to be running to go check a kindergartner’s original birth certificate before we decide which team they’re going to play on,” Edman said. “It would be a huge burden on local schools and sports associations.”
Edman said Republicans use the issue to “rile their people up,” distracting voters from issues affecting them—including increased grocery costs and rising gas prices.
For years, Republicans have sought to bar transgender students from participating in school sports. Advocates call it a “culture war” issue designed to “further stigmatize and discriminate against LGBTQ+ people across the country, pointing to the fact that only about one in 30 highschoolers nationwide identify as transgender, and of that small subset, data that shows just 14% of transgender boys and 12% of transgender girls play sports. In other words: these policies target roughly .004% of high school students.
“We should really be celebrating that there are kids who feel safe and comfortable enough as themselves in their schools to want to play sports with their friends,” Edman said. “Unfortunately we’ve seen across the country trans people being used as a boogeyman to scare people into voting against their own interests.”
