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As the 2026 elections approach, transgender people across the country are watching one fight in particular: a wave of anti-trans ballot measures heading directly to voters this November. Five states — Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington — are set to put measures before the electorate that would target transgender people in sports, medical care, and in Arizona’s case, bathrooms and locker rooms in schools, with funding tracked by a groundbreaking new Ballotpedia investigation. A sixth measure in Maine was invalidated. It is the first time in American history that voters will decide on anti-transgender measures at the ballot box — a strategic shift that advocacy groups have compared to the anti-gay-marriage amendments that swept state ballots in 2004. For transgender people who have sought refuge in blue states to escape the bans spreading through Republican-controlled legislatures, these measures represent a new and more direct threat: the possibility that their neighbors, not distant lawmakers, will vote to strip their rights.

One of the central fights will be in Washington, where a ballot initiative funded by conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood would institute a K-12 sports ban — and require every girl who wants to play to have her sex verified by a doctor first. The measure’s language is explicit: to be eligible, a student must provide a statement from her health care provider “that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” That requirement applies not to transgender students specifically but to every girl in the state who wants to play any sport with a sex-separate classification — from basketball and soccer to cheerleading, bowling, and golf. The........

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