In the same election that brought strong showings for Democratic candidates around the country, voters in three states chose to bar transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams.
The results, including in at least one state where Democrats are dominant, suggested that many voters do not view accommodations for trans athletes as part of a broad Democratic agenda. The results also appeared likely to inspire similar campaigns in future elections on an issue that has rarely been tested at the ballot box.
Since 2020, lawmakers in Republican-led states across the country have enacted laws limiting how transgender people can participate in public life. But this election was the first time voters were asked to consider new restrictions through statewide ballot measures, and they approved many of them. The margins were large in Arizona and Nebraska, and narrower in Washington, where Democrats dominate. In Colorado, votes were still being counted on Thursday in a ballot measure over the same issue.
Supporters of the initiatives said they hoped the sports issue would be put directly to voters in other Democrat-led states. The results could also mean that decisions around broader rights for transgender people will be put before voters, political strategists said.
“To every female athlete who wondered whether her voice mattered: tonight, Washington heard you,’’ Brian Heywood, the Seattle-area hedge fund founder who financed the Washington initiative, said in a statement.
For supporters of the restrictions, the results felt like vindication.
Polls have shown that a solid majority of Americans, including roughly half of Democrats, think that transgender girls and women should not play on girls’ and women’s sports teams. Many believe that trans athletes hold a physical edge, and that their participation prevents others from having a fair chance to win, the polls indicate.
Over the past six years, 27 states enacted laws restricting the participation of transgender students in sports starting in kindergarten or middle school, extending in many cases to college. The Supreme Court upheld such laws last June.
But in nearly two dozen Democrat-led states, including Colorado and Washington, legislatures have taken no such action. That is why Erin Lee, executive director of Protect Kids Colorado, a parent advocacy group sponsoring the initiative, wanted to put the question on the ballot in Colorado.
By Thursday afternoon, with more than 80 percent of ballots counted, the vote in Colorado on a ban on trans athletes in girls sports was close, with about 53 percent of voters favoring the measure. A second Colorado ballot measure that would ban gender-transition-related surgeries for minors, was also close, with 52 percent of voters in favor as the vote counting continued.
“My hope is that we can be the example of a blue state where your legislature is not following the will of the people,” she said. “Where we, the people, can do it ourselves, and hopefully encourage others to follow suit.”
Opponents of the restrictions said they viewed the election results as a major setback. Advocates for transgender rights have argued that it is important to defend trans athlete participation for reasons that extend beyond sports.
They say that treating trans girls as boys in the context of sports could set a precedent that might be applied to other areas, including access to bathrooms, identity documents and transgender health care. They also say that the number of trans athletes is small and that conservative groups have used the ballot measures as a wedge to either boost voter turnout or distract voters from more pressing economic issues.
In Washington, opponents of the initiative said its approval threatened to scapegoat a vulnerable population. A spokesman for No Hate in WA State said the new law was likely to be challenged in court.
“To all the trans kids, to all of the girls playing elementary, middle and high school sports, we care about you and there are people who will never stop fighting for you,” said Adrianna Suluai, one of the group’s leaders.
In the final weeks of the midterm election cycle, Republican campaigns and their supporters emphasized transgender issues to portray Democrats as radical and out of step. At the same time, several Democrats in close races distanced themselves from the party’s traditional support of transgender issues as a civil rights battle.
Several Democratic Senate candidates who won upsets on Tuesday in traditionally conservative states, including Annie Andrews in South Carolina, James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa, voiced opposition to transgender female athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Still, transgender advocates on Wednesday said the election results showed that anti-transgender messaging by Republicans had been ineffective and that the sports measures were focused on one of the thorniest issues in the national debate over the recognition of transgender identities.
“I think this shows that voters do want to see rules, they want to see guidelines in sports,” said Ari Drennan, a trans woman and founder of Pink and Blue Strategies, a political consulting firm. “But some of the margins on these are quite close.”
There is no authoritative count of trans athletes in school sports. About 2.8 million people age 13 and older in the United States identify as transgender, according to an analysis of government data by the Williams Institute at U.C.L.A. That amounts to about 1 percent of the population in that age group.
Large majorities of Americans oppose discrimination against transgender people in areas like housing and employment, polls show. But many also believe that self-identified gender should not replace birth sex as an organizing principle for society when it comes to sports, locker rooms and identity documents, and that health professionals should be barred from prescribing gender-transition medication to adolescents.
The ballot measures come after years of intense political, legal and scientific debate over whether it is fair for trans girls to compete in girls’ sports. Some student athletes in states that allow transgender athlete participation have staged protests, including recently in Washington State, where a group of high school girls walked off the field of a cross-country match.
The Washington initiative drew scrutiny because of its verification process, which supporters said was necessary because the state allows transgender people to change the gender marker on their birth certificate. The measure mandates that students in grades 6-12 seeking to compete in the girls’ category submit documentation from their health care provider verifying the student’s sex. That would happen in at least one of three ways: physical examination of reproductive anatomy, testing of genetic makeup or analysis of naturally produced testosterone levels.
Colorado’s ballot measure bars transgender girls from participating in sports from kindergarten through college, but leaves verification to local authorities. The measure in Arizona extends an existing ban to include private schools, and requires students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their birth-sex at sporting events. The one in Nebraska adds an existing ban to the State Constitution.
In Missouri, voters rejected an amendment that would have written into the State Constitution a ban on gender-transition treatments and surgeries for people under the age of 18. That language was part of a measure that would have restored an abortion ban in the state.
In 2018, Massachusetts voters decided against repealing a state law prohibiting gender identity discrimination in public accommodations. But the measures this week were the first time American voters were asked to weigh in on whether to set new restrictions on transgender people. At least one group, Protect Girls Sports in Maine, has said it hopes to place a referendum on transgender student athletes on the 2027 ballot, after failing to qualify this year.
“Historically, sports bans have been a foot in the door,” said Logan Casey, a political scientist who tracks state-level legislation for the Movement Advancement Project, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group. “Once a state passes one anti-trans law, it always goes on to pass more, and often that first one has been a sports ban.”
Juliet Macur contributed reporting.
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