Arizonans to vote on increased protections for girls’ sports

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(The Center Square) - Arizonans have a chance on Nov. 3 to strengthen Arizona’s state law preventing biological males from competing in female sports.

Currently Arizona is one of 27 states with a law that stops transgender athletes from playing in female sports.

Proposition 318 would expand the requirement for athletic associations sponsoring interscholastic or intramural sports to classify teams by biological sex. Current state law only requires public and private schools to do this.

The proposition would also prevent schools and athletic associations from letting biological males use female athletes' locker rooms, bathrooms or other private spaces “integral to athletic engagement.”

Proposition 318 would extend existing protections to athletic associations by preventing government entities, licensing organizations and other athletic associations from taking “adverse action” against them for not allowing transgender athletes to compete with females.

The proposition would expand the existing right to sue over lost athletic opportunity or retaliation from students to athletes. They would be allowed to sue athletic associations, not just schools. Current state law only allows these lawsuits against schools.

The bill defines an athlete as an “individual, including a student, who participates in any interscholastic or intramural athletic team or sport.”

On top of all this, Proposition 318 defines sex as “an individual’s biological status as male or female as recorded at birth on the individual’s original birth certificate.”

Senate President Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, who is running for state attorney general against Democratic incumbent Kris Mayes, said he supports Proposition 318 because it keeps biological males out of female sports, bathrooms and locker rooms.

Petersen told The Center Square that he “completely supports protecting girls' sports and their privacy.”

The Center Square reached out to numerous organizations opposed to Proposition 318, but none responded before publication time.  

Daniel Schmid, the associate vice president of legal affairs with Liberty Counsel, called Proposition 318 a “commonsense measure that recognizes biological and chromosomal reality.”

Liberty Counsel is a Christian nonprofit law firm.

“The world at the moment has lost its collective mind, it appears, in suggesting that despite being a male, you can just wake up one day and say, ‘No, I’m a female,’ and all of a sudden you become one. That’s nonsense,” Schmid told The Center Square.

He said having biological males compete in female sports is “more than just playing the actual sport,” adding that it has “broader implications for the culture.”

“Recognition of a male as a female when his biology is different also comes with a number of circumstances, such as use of the locker room, the changing room and the shower. There are a great many women who find that a gross intrusion into their privacy, and they should,” he explained.

According to Schmid, allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports doesn’t “protect women’s sports,” but rather it “runs roughshod over Title IX.”

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court decided on two cases surrounding state laws banning biological males from female sports.

West Virginia v. B.P.J. concerned Becky Pepper-Jackson, a biological male who identified as a female, who challenged a West Virginia state law preventing Pepper-Jackson from competing on a school’s cross-country team.

Little v. Hecox involved Lindsay Hecox, a biological male who identified as a female, who challenged an Idaho law that prevented Hecox from trying out for Boise State University’s women’s track and field and cross country teams.

The Supreme Court issued a single opinion for both cases and upheld both state laws. The justices said West Virginia’s law did not violate Title IX and that both states’ laws did not infringe on the plaintiffs’ rights under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.