On Oct. 5, KUOW reported that I-638, the initiative that would ban trans girls from girls’ school sports in Washington, could pass in November. Stephen Reed, a spokesperson for the Washington State Democrats, told the station that “this will probably be close” and that it “is not a slam dunk like some folks think it might be.”
Andrew Villeneuve, whose Northwest Progressive Institute is part of the coalition against the measure, said that voters who “just open up their ballot to vote at their kitchen table” are “poised to vote yes.” He told KUOW that in polling he described but didn’t release, support dropped once voters heard that genital exams could be required of all girls.
There isn’t much public polling, and none of it settles the question. Let’s Go Washington, the conservative group behind I-638, says its own survey, which it describes as “based on the ballot titles,” has the measure ahead 56% to 24% in a projection it adjusted for party share, with 22% undecided.
The group hasn’t published its exact questions, field dates or margin of error. A May poll that the No campaign posted had 43% of voters planning to vote yes, but it didn’t say how many planned to vote no.
I understand why some people assume an anti-trans measure like this can’t pass in a state that, as KUOW put it, “tends to vote for progressive leaders and policies.” But I-638 doesn’t need to change anyone’s mind about trans people to win.
It only needs voters to read a few lines on their ballot about “verification of biological sex” and fill in the oval for yes without knowing what that verification would involve. The ballot won’t tell them that the verification would cover every girl on a girls’ school team, or who would pay for it.
I think the left is sleeping on I-638, and if it passes, it won’t just keep out the handful of trans girls it was written to exclude. It will put a new medical requirement on every girl who wants to play on a girls’ school team in Washington.
What I-638 would actually do
Let’s start with what voters will see. The I-638 entry on the ballot says the measure “would require verification of biological sex by students’ healthcare providers,” and it doesn’t say how.
The initiative’s text is much more specific. A student who goes out for a girls’-only team would need a statement from her “personal health care provider” that verifies her sex, “relying only on one or more of the following: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
The attorney general’s office, which writes the explanation of each measure in the voters’ pamphlet, says that students “would thus have to undergo some type of medical evaluation of their sex to participate in interschool sports designated for female students only.” No student going out for a boys’ team would face anything like it, as the Washington State PTA, which opposes the measure, has pointed out.
Let’s Go Washington says the measure is just “adding a checkbox back onto a form that doctors already fill out,” as spokesperson Hallie Herzberg wrote in a statement quoted by the Seattle Times. It’s true that physicians in Washington had to mark a student’s sex on sports evaluation forms until that rule was rolled back in 2019.
But I-638 doesn’t just bring back a checkbox. It tells the provider what the answer has to rest on, and neither birth records nor a parent’s word is on the list, even though the Yes side’s own argument in the voters’ pamphlet says a provider could use a student’s “birth records.”
So what would verification look like for an actual kid? KUOW reported that, under the initiative, a genital exam “would likely be the most accessible option for most kids,” and that a medical professional can do it “without touching the child.”
Dr. Glenna Martin, a doctor in Washington who, as a medical student, volunteered at large group physicals for students without regular doctors, told the Seattle Times that at those events, “we were definitely never doing genital exams.” Dr. Eloi Hoopman, a family physician in Pierce County who opposes the measure, asked the Seattle Times, “Can you imagine that you have to get a genital exam, and you’re 12 and you want to play volleyball?”
I can’t, and I don’t think most parents in Washington can either. No girl should need a medical evaluation of her sex to play volleyball.
The initiative doesn’t say who pays
A blood testosterone test can cost $162 if insurance doesn’t cover it, and chromosome testing costs $1,310, according to the Spokesman-Review, but the initiative doesn’t say who would pay for either. Dr. Libby Loft, a family medicine doctor in Spokane who opposes the measure, told the paper that it’s “very unlikely that insurance companies are going to foot the bill for unnecessary medical testing.”
The verifying statement also has to come from a girl’s “personal health care provider,” and the PTA warns that this “may push families off the school-based physicals many depend on — including the group physicals some districts arrange for students without a regular doctor.” Because insurance is unlikely to cover the lab tests, the PTA says, “for many girls the practical result would be an intimate examination that serves no medical purpose.”
Dr. Lelach Rave, executive director of the Washington chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, asked the Seattle Times back in March, “Are we now going to have a financial bar to enter into sports participation?” If I-638 passes, the girls who would likely have the hardest time clearing that bar are the ones whose families can least afford an extra doctor’s visit or a lab bill.
The girls this is about
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, which oversees school sports in the state, knows of roughly 10 trans athletes among more than 200,000 kids who compete, according to KUOW, and The Cut reported that the count includes both boys and girls. To keep the trans girls among them off girls’ teams, I-638 would require verifying the sex of every girl on one.
I wrote in 2024 that this whole issue is a bit of a red herring, designed by right-wing strategists as a way to paint trans people as “other” for their own cynical political gain. The numbers in Washington show how small the issue is.
Only about four in ten U.S. adults told Pew in a 2024 survey that they know someone who’s transgender, so it’s worth hearing from the people who do. Tori, the mother of a 7-year-old trans girl in Washington, who asked The 19th to use only her first name, said, “Undergoing an invasive sex verification test will cause all girls far more harm than running around the same soccer field as someone that is different from them.”
In 2025, a Seattle-area mother whose trans daughter was in seventh grade told KUOW that “soccer is just a place where she can be herself.” Bella, a 17-year-old with trans teammates on her school’s ultimate frisbee team, told The 19th that her team is “just a group of girls supporting each other and hanging out on and off the field.”
Sports are about more than who gets a trophy, and they teach you about teamwork, discipline, and building healthy habits. Trans girls deserve those things too, and no girl should need a doctor to verify her sex to get them.
Why it could pass
For most of the past year, the people pushing I-638 had the conversation about it on social media almost to themselves. According to proprietary monitoring data from my firm, Pink and Blue Strategies, supporters’ posts naming I-638 drew about 33,900 likes, shares and comments in the accounts we track before the No campaign’s kickoff rally on June 17, not counting the campaigns’ own accounts or that of Let’s Go Washington’s founder.
Opposing accounts drew about 700 in the same stretch, and about 71% of the supporters’ total came from one conservative commentator, Brandi Kruse. Since the kickoff, supporters’ lead in likes, shares and comments has shrunk to about 1.2 to 1, but their posts have still drawn more than four times as many views on X.
On paper, the No side had more cash to work with. No Hate in WA State is the main campaign against I-638, and it’s also fighting I-001, another Let’s Go Washington measure.
No Hate had about $662,000 on hand on Aug. 31, according to its report covering August, while Let’s Go Washington had about $139,000. Let’s Go Washington has raised more in 2026 across its three measures, though, and reports about $4.8 million in liabilities, mostly loans from its founder, Brian Heywood.
No Hate’s itemized spending through August included no TV, radio or digital ad buys. As of Oct. 13, no committee working on I-638 had a political file, the public record a station keeps of political ad buys, at any of six Seattle-area TV stations.
No on 645, the campaign against Let’s Go Washington’s measure to repeal the state’s new income tax on high earners, had files at all six. Google doesn’t accept ads about Washington ballot measures, and Meta bars them from running in or targeting the state, rules that apply to both sides.
Reed, the state Democrats’ spokesperson, told KUOW that the fight over the income tax is “sucking up a lot of the oxygen in the room.” When I talked to KUOW for the same story, I said, “This is something that the right is just invested in bringing attention to and the left is focused elsewhere.”
I still think that’s true. With ballots going out on Oct. 16, there isn’t much time left to change it.
Ballots go out Oct. 16
When ballots arrive, the I-638 entry will say the measure “would require verification of biological sex by students’ healthcare providers,” and nothing about how. The voters’ pamphlet says what the ballot doesn’t: the verification “would have to be based on the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
Brandi Kruse has asked her followers to text or call 10 friends and family members about the initiatives. We better be calling ours too.
Online and mail registrations must be received by Oct. 26, and you can register in person until 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, according to the Secretary of State. If you live in Washington, please vote no on I-638.
Just a healthy reminder that Queer media is exactly why it is that we are surviving thank you Ari.
https://thistleandmoss.com/p/the-concession-speech-in-witness-protection-house-gop-prices-its-own-goddamn-funeral#queerisms-where-are-we-today
Can't even imagine the horror this places on intersex kids. Like when you're trans you know some kind of outing in your life is inevitable. But imagine you are cis and suddenly your sex is contested as a kid. Imagine you didn't even know you were intersex. Or you have CAIS and a transphobic doctor goes "well, last lab work showed male testosterone levels, I can't in good conscience write female." It's all f'cked up.