Critics say ‘Protect Girls Sports’ act will lead to intrusive bathroom policing

Arizonans will decide in November whether schools should scrutinize who uses which bathrooms during school sports events. Republicans have framed it as a safety issue while critics warn it will only lead to intrusive policing and humiliation. 

For the past several years, Republicans across the country have pushed discriminatory policies barring transgender people from using public facilities and participating in athletic activities consistent with their gender identity. In Arizona, that resulted in a 2022 law prohibiting trans students from joining girls sports teams. This year, GOP lawmakers in the Grand Canyon State are hoping voters will agree to exclude trans kids even more by threatening schools and athletic associations with lawsuits if they allow trans girls to join school sports teams or allow them — during sporting events — to use bathrooms, locker rooms or school showers that align with their gender identity. 

Joel Edman, the strategic initiatives director for Progress Arizona, said the ballot measure, titled the “Protect Girls Sports in Arizona Act,” does not live up to its name and will instead lead to increased scrutiny of all students.

“The negative impacts (this) would have, not only on trying to bully and shame transgender people of all ages back into closets, into the shadows, but also to enforce a stereotype of what girls are supposed to look and dress and act like,” he said. “The real risk that this measure poses is having all girls potentially scrutinized for being too tall, or too strong, or too good at whatever sport they want to play with their friends.” 

Progress Arizona, through a political action committee, sought to convince a court to throw out the ballot measure, also known as Prop. 318, arguing that it violates the requirements in the Arizona Constitution that mandate ballot measures keep to one subject and clearly define its content in the title. The group argued that the proposal covers too much because it details how school sports teams must be separated by gender and regulates the use of school facilities during athletic events. But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gregory Como disagreed, ruling that all of its provisions work toward the same goal: limiting the “freedom of transgender students to participate in athletics,” whether on the court or in school facilities used during athletic events. 

Opponents of the ballot measure fear that it will go beyond regulating where students can go, ensnaring members of the public. The proposal expressly forbids athletic associations, schools and school employees from allowing anyone to use a restroom, locker room, shower room or other space that isn’t “designated for that individual’s sex.” Edman noted that means that schools would need to police parents and other visitors, too. 

“Imagine there’s a fan, a family member, supporting students at a basketball game who needs to go use the restroom,” he said. “The measure would seem to require that those restrooms, because they’re connected to an athletic facility or event, would have to be strictly gender policed. Even people just there for an hour or two watching a sporting event.” 

And it’s unclear how that would be accomplished for students or members of the public visiting the bathroom during sporting events. While the ballot measure makes the separation of school sports teams by gender reliant on birth certificates, no such criteria is included for how school employees are expected to figure out who is allowed into which bathroom. But the threat of a lawsuit if an athlete feels they’ve suffered “direct or indirect harm” because of a school or athletic association knowingly violating the directive to police school facilities still applies.