Barely a week after the US Supreme Court decided that states may ban Transgender girls from participating in girls’ school sports under Title IX, the Heritage Foundation quietly released a report calling for something far more sweeping: the destruction of Title IX itself.

The report argues that Title IX — the landmark civil rights law that opened school athletics to generations of girls — has gone too far. It paints women’s growing participation in competitive sports not as one of America’s greatest civil rights successes but as a mistake that should be reversed in keeping with women’s “natural” place in the world.

With this report, the Heritage Foundation is outlining a blueprint for policymakers to follow. And as one of the country’s most influential think tanks — thanks to its close affiliation with the Trump administration — that blueprint will surely be followed across the country.

Come November, Washington voters will have an opportunity to decide whether to apply that blueprint to our own state or to reject it.

Initiative IL26-638 would not only ban Transgender girls from participating in girls’ school sports, it would require every girl who wants to compete on a girls’ team to verify their sex. That means hundreds of thousands of young girls would be forced to endure invasive gynecological exams, blood tests, and investigations of their personal medical records.

Because of this blanket mandate, the initiative would be the nation’s most draconian ban of its kind. Parents may think twice before signing their daughters up for sports. Young athletes could worry that one accusation from a classmate, parent, or opposing team might force them into a deeply humiliating investigation. 

Instead of encouraging girls to compete and take part in a cornerstone of growing up, schools could be asked to police children’s bodies. For many families, that alone could be enough to walk away. 

Fewer girls participating in sports — and the complete exclusion of Trans girls from public school teams — are both key goals in the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint to dismantle Title IX. 

Title IX, the report claims, has created "a new sort of woman — one that is more aggressive, more competitive, more male, less relational, and less oriented toward the goods of family and motherhood." It goes on to argue that schools should move away from equal athletic opportunity and return to archaic policies based on outdated ideas about women’s roles in society. 
WA’s IL26-638 would do exactly that.

The new law would become a national benchmark for all other far-right policymakers, who are newly emboldened thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v B.P.J., which found there is no federal constitutional protection stopping states from passing Trans sports bans. The policy could be replicated across the United States, and decades of progress enshrining gender equality into law could be further unraveled.

If Title IX protections continue to be eroded, as the Heritage Foundation and other conservative thought leaders want, other federal laws protecting marginalized people once thought to be safe could be under threat next — whether it Title VII protections against discrimination in the workplace or even marriage equality.

Washington may currently be a place of refuge for Transgender Americans, but this is not guaranteed in the future. This November, the national fight over gender equality comes to our state’s own ballot. To defeat this burgeoning, hate-filled movement, we must stand together and reject this initiative.

Yvette Maganya is the Washington state director for Legal Voice, a nonprofit that fights for gender justice through impact litigation, policy advocacy, education, and coalition building.