Once signatures are delivered, Maine voters will be the first to roll back transgender rights in November

A sales representative for the Protect Girls Sports campaign looks on as a voter signs a petition to restrict transgender students’ access to sports and school facilities at the Green Ladle Culinary School in Lewiston on November 4, 2025. (Photo by Jim Neuger/Maine Morning Star)

On Monday, the campaign behind an initiative to roll back Maine’s inclusive policy for transgender athletes said it had collected enough signatures to appear on the November ballot.

At a news conference at the House of Representatives, the group announced that it had collected more than 82,000 signatures from Maine voters over the past few months – more than the 68,000 required to place a citizens’ initiative on the ballot. The signatures must still be certified by the Secretary of State’s office before the referendum can be approved.

Leyland Streiff, lead petitioner and co-chair of Maine Girl Dads, said in: video on social media that the 80,000 signatures show “how much it means to the state of Maine to protect girls’ sports.”

The ballot question committee behind this campaign was funded solely by Midwest billionaire megadonor Richard Uihlein, who donated $800,000 for the October campaign. Uihlein and his wife financed Republican causes across the country, including donating millions to these organizations anti-abortion efforts nationwide.

The coalition led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law and the Women’s Lobby of Maine, which opposed the campaign, said out-of-state influences indicate the ballot initiative is not intended to promote fairness in Maine sports or protect cisgender girls – as the campaign alleged – but rather to advance a conservative political agenda that seeks to limit transgender rights nationally.

“This campaign is about more than just a handful of Maine kids playing sports,” said David Farmer, a spokesman for the coalition. “This initiative is funded by one of the richest men in the world, who spends vast amounts of money promoting extreme candidates and extreme ideas.”

If passed, the proposal would require schools to separate sports teams, locker rooms and bathrooms solely based on “biological sex,” forcing transgender students to operate facilities that match their sex assigned at birth. It would also require the creation of coeducational teams. This closely mirrors the language one of the failed legislative attempts exceeded similar limits last season.

While several states have similar initiatives to overturn the November election, if passed, Maine could be one of the first to succeed nationwide, according to Angela Dallara. director of rapid response and campaigns at GLAAD, a national LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

She added that ballot measures may be easier to pass compared to bills passed by the Maine Legislature because many voters may not understand what is at stake or may be more susceptible to myths and misconceptions. For example, Maine Girl Dads and others argued that the proposal would assist protect the safety of cisgender girls in bathrooms and locker rooms, although no data found that cis girls are at greater risk in bathrooms shared with trans girls.

“Forcing anti-transgender measures on voters who may be susceptible to lies and fraud about transgender people is clearly a deliberate tactic that opponents of LGBTQ equality seek to exploit in an attempt to thwart failed legislative efforts.” Dallara said about citizen initiatives.

In 2018, Massachusetts voters passed a ballot initiative to maintain a 2016 anti-discrimination law that would have allowed transgender people to access public bathrooms and other spaces consistent with their gender identity. The vote was passed because “the more time people have to consider this topic and learn about trans people, the more they support trans rights,” Dallara said. “This is the best way to build understanding and defeat anti-trans measures.”

This will be the focus of the local coalition’s efforts, said Destie Hohman Sprague, executive director of the Maine Women’s Lobby. Organizations opposing Maine’s ballot initiative want to counter the campaign’s argument that it’s about fairness in sports and instead “make sure our communities truly understand the threat this initiative poses.”

Maine gained national attention this spring after Gov. Janet Mills defended the state’s policies in a tense exchange with President Donald Trump. The Maine Department of Education and Greely High School in Cumberland have been the subject of several federal investigations for alleged violations of anti-discrimination laws for allowing transgender girls to play on girls’ teams. The state is currently being sued by the Department of Justice in an ongoing lawsuit alleging violations of Title IX.

In line with Trump’s transgender rights executive order, Republican lawmakers last year attempted to roll back decades-old protections in the Maine Human Rights Act that allow transgender students to play on teams and have access to bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice.

“This law has been in place for decades and it works well,” Dallara said. “So the only reason you know it applies now is largely a political tactic. I think opponents of transgender equality are trying to roll back existing protections to divert attention from other issues and create some problem that doesn’t really exist.”