{"id":167,"date":"2026-05-27T16:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:38:26","slug":"maine-removes-trans-sports-and-bathroom-ban-from-november-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Maine Removes Trans Sports and Bathroom Ban From November Ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- begin partial\/series-card --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><i><span>Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, <\/span><\/i><i><span>support us with a donation<\/span><\/i><i><span> of any size.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=165\">Trump White House Advances Plan Requiring Federal Workers to Sign NDAs<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>On Tuesday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that a proposed ballot initiative banning trans students from school sports and bathrooms will not appear before voters this November. The billionaire-funded campaign initially submitted 79,692 signatures \u2014 well over the 67,682 required to qualify \u2014 and the Secretary of State\u2019s office certified the question for the ballot in March. But indications soon emerged that the signature-gathering process was riddled with improper procedures and, in at least one documented case and potentially many others, outright forgery. After a court remand, an evidentiary hearing, and a sworn-testimony , 12,542 signatures were invalidated, leaving the campaign 532 short of the threshold. Barring an appeal \u2014 which is likely though its success is far from certain \u2014 transgender students in Maine can rest a little easier this election cycle.<\/p>\n<p>The  are striking. One out-of-state circulator left his petition forms unattended at a Topsham polling place on Election Day \u2014 twice \u2014 allowing voters to sign without a witness present, in direct violation of Maine law. Another circulator did the same at a Saco polling place, leaving her table for extended periods while crowds of voters signed unwitnessed petitions. When asked under oath whether she had destroyed the unwitnessed forms as required, she said yes \u2014 but a photograph submitted into evidence showed one of those forms was in fact turned in for validation. Most troubling of all, an out-of-state signature gatherer paid per signature submitted forms that appear to contain outright forgeries: one voter listed on her petition testified under oath that she had never signed it and had never even heard of the initiative. After the Oxford town clerk flagged additional suspicious signatures, an Elections Division review compared every name on the circulator\u2019s forms against voter registration applications \u2014 and concluded that every single one of her validated signatures should have been thrown out as signed by another person.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the evidence, Bellows ruled Tuesday that the initiative had failed to qualify for the November ballot. The decision marked a reversal of her own March certification, when her office initially determined that the petition contained enough valid signatures to move forward. That earlier ruling was challenged in Cumberland County Superior Court by three Maine voters, who alleged that thousands of signatures had been collected in violation of state law. In April, Justice Deborah Cashman agreed that the original review had been incomplete and remanded the case back to the Secretary of State\u2019s office for further factfinding, ordering a new determination of validity within thirty days. That process produced the May 12 evidentiary hearing \u2014 where witnesses, including town clerks and voters whose names appeared on petitions, testified under oath \u2014 and ultimately the decision invalidating thousands more signatures than the initial review had caught. Bellows adopted that recommendation in full.<\/p>\n<p>The initiative would have done far more than what its sports-focused branding suggested. It would have defined a person\u2019s sex for school purposes as \u201ca person\u2019s biological status as male or female recorded at birth on the person\u2019s original birth certificate\u201d \u2014 a definition that would have stripped transgender students of legal recognition in Maine schools. It would have required public schools to \u201cmaintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms, and other private spaces for each sex,\u201d extending the ban well beyond athletics and into every gendered space in a school building. It would have created a private right of action allowing any student to sue their school for \u201cdirect injury\u201d suffered from a violation of the act, effectively turning every transgender student\u2019s presence in a bathroom or on a sports team into potential litigation. And it would have specifically carved transgender students out of the Maine Human Rights Act.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=163\">Protests Erupt at New Jersey Detention Center in Support of Hunger Striking Detainees<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The anti-trans signature drive was not a grassroots effort. It was bankrolled by Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, the co-founder of Uline office supplies, who donated $800,000 to fund the entire effort. Uihlein has given more than $250 million to political causes since 2016, and is a major funder of the American Principles Project, which routinely spends tens of millions on anti-trans campaign ads during election years. He is not alone: an independent analysis published by Atmos and HEATED found that 80% of 45 major anti-trans organizations in the U.S. have received funding from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The Maine initiative was part of that broader pattern \u2014 an attempt by a small handful of extraordinarily wealthy donors to use direct democracy as a workaround in states where elected legislatures have refused to engage in anti-trans legislation.<\/p>\n<p>The decision was greeted with relief by the LGBTQ+ coalition that has fought the initiative since the day it was filed. \u201cMaine has strict rules in place to protect the integrity of our elections and our system of direct democracy. The paid, out-of-state signature gathers and the billionaire who paid to try to put this question on the ballot failed to follow the rules,\u201d said David Farmer, campaign manager for the Campaign for Free and Fair Schools, the coalition led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law, and the Maine Women\u2019s Lobby. \u201cWe believe that the appeals process and the reviews by the Secretary of State are working as the law intends. They are protecting the integrity of our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Maine ruling is not the end of fight. Similar billionaire-backed initiatives have been certified for the November ballot in Washington and Colorado, where voters will decide whether to bar transgender students from sports as well as medical care restrictions. Both efforts are also funded by conservative megadonors, and both are part of the same strategy that produced the Maine initiative: use ballot initiatives to roll back trans rights in states whose elected legislatures have refused to do so. The Maine anti-trans campaign is expected appeal Bellows\u2019 decision to Maine Superior Court within the ten-day window the law allows.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=161\">Residents of Polluted Areas Say Trump\u2019s Regulatory Rollbacks Are \u201cGetting Really Scary\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A review of the billionaire-funded petition campaign identified forged signatures and improper gathering procedures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Maine Removes Trans Sports and Bathroom Ban From November Ballot - 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