Left-leaning Washington and Colorado join more conservative states in banning transgender athletes

Voters in left-leaning Washington state and Colorado have approved measures designed to ban transgender athletes from participating in school-sanctioned sports.

Measure 638 in Washington, which had more than 56% of the vote, will prevent students who were assigned male at birth from participating in sports designated for female athletes. The measure also requires athletes wanting to play in female sports to produce a statement from a health care provider verifying their gender.

Proposition 134 in Colorado will require educational institutions and athletic associations to assign sports as male, female or coed. The proposal, which was supported by 52% of voters, will also limit athletes to playing in sports in the gender they were assigned at birth.

The votes came in states where Democratic-led governors’ offices and legislatures have declined to enact the kind of bans that have become the norm in Republican-led states.

Supporters of the bans decided to force the issue by putting it on the ballot, and the results indicate that what conservatives once used as a wedge issue in the culture wars has become one of the few to receive bipartisan support.

“This was always coming because politicians in those states have been ignoring their constituencies on the ground,” said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School. “And, as we saw on Tuesday, there’s only so long that can work. Whether other blue states join Washington and Colorado depends on local political culture and on the ability of the advocacy groups on both sides of the issue to marshal their troops.”

The passages came during the same election cycle in which Arizona voters chose to expand restrictions initially outlined in a 2022 law.

Proposition 318 will prohibit transgender girls from participating in female sports in all schools and athletic associations — they were already barred from doing so in public schools — and limit transgender people to using bathrooms and other private spaces to the gender they were assigned at birth.

The proposition also requires an athlete's “sex” to reflect what they were assigned on their birth certificate and allows athletes to sue schools and associations that violate the expanded law.

Nebraska, which already had a ban in place on transgender athletes, codified the ban in the state constitution after passing Measure 442. The measure requires schools to designate a sport as male, female or coed and prohibits students assigned male at birth from participating in female sports.

Other transgender bans have gone to the courts. A county-level ban in suburban Nassau County outside New York City was struck down by an appeals court Tuesday in a setback to the GOP nominee for governor, who championed the legislation while serving as county executive.

The results in Washington and Colorado came less than two years after President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which gave federal agencies wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.

The expansion of transgender bans in individual states — now well over half the country has a transgender athlete ban of some kind — as well as the passage of other conservative-backed agendas like voter ID requirements in places like Ohio highlight that some Trump-backed policies do resonate with voters across the political spectrum. But widespread discontent over more high-profile issues like the war in Iran had a far greater impact during midterm elections that ended with Democrats gaining control of the House and Senate .

There were some limits in the transgender votes. In Missouri, voters declined to support Amendment 3, which would have banned gender-transition treatment and surgeries for minors as well as repealed the right to abortion.

“The reality is undeniable: fearmongering about transgender people is a losing strategy,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “Election 2026 must go down in history as the last campaign to try it.”

See AP’s full sports coverage here