This article is a republication from Rewire News Group. The original release can be found here.
Nov 5, 2026 | By Natasha Roy
Against the backdrop of a blue wave across the country, multiple states passed ballot measures chipping away at trans kids’ rights.
The Democratic tsunami that brought historic wins to candidates nationwide—including LGBTQ+ politicians—also delivered significant blows to trans rights.
This year, Nebraska, Arizona, Colorado, and Washington state asked voters to weigh in on ballot measures that would either ban gender-affirming surgery for minors or prevent trans kids from playing on sports teams that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth.
And in each state, voters have approved or appear to be on the verge of passing these anti-trans initiatives.
“Our hearts are heavy as we acknowledge difficult losses around the country that will deny transgender youth and their families the rights they deserve,” Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer at the ACLU, said in a statement to Rewire News Group.
In Nebraska, voters overwhelmingly said yes to Initiative 442, amending the state constitution to require schools to designate male, female, and co-ed sports teams, and prevent people assigned male at birth from playing on female teams.
Nebraska’s ballot measure essentially cements existing law into the state constitution—but its new status as an approved amendment makes it much more difficult to overturn.
Arizona Proposition 318, which passed with nearly 59 percent of the vote, adds a state statute banning people from using restrooms, locker rooms, and other private spaces in schools and private athletic programs that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth. It also expands an existing ban on trans people playing on gender-separated sports teams that don’t correspond to their assigned sex at birth.
Arizona’s ballot measure goes a bit further than Nebraska’s: It will explicitly define sex in state law as the “biological status as male or female as recorded at birth on the individual’s original birth certificate.”
Washington state also passed Initiative 638 to ban trans girls from participating in girls’ sports. The ballot initiative stipulates that anyone who wants to play on girls’ sports teams must have their assigned sex at birth verified by a health-care professional. Opponents of the measure say this would effectively require genital exams for girls.
Outcomes of Colorado’s two anti-trans ballot measures are yet to be declared, though they appear to be on track to popular approval. With 86 percent of ballots counted, each has around 52 percent of the vote as of publication, according to vote counts by the Associated Press.
If Colorado Proposition 134 is approved, trans girls won’t be able to play on girls’ sports teams. Proposition 135 would ban minors from having gender-affirming surgeries—an already-rare phenomenon—and prevent state Medicaid dollars from paying for such procedures.
‘We overestimate blue states’
Nebraska’s outcome isn’t entirely surprising. The state is reliably red, and several Nebraska politicians supported Initiative 442.
But in Arizona, Colorado, and Washington, Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Congress have largely prevailed. So voters’ approval for anti-trans measures that consistently use right-wing language describing trans women as “biological males” seems to run contrary to the left’s projection as the pro-LGBTQ+ coalition.
“I think people put a lot of emphasis on red states being the place where all of the bad things are going to happen,” Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, told RNG. “But I think what it does mean is that we overestimate blue states.”
Chestnut, who uses both he and they pronouns, pointed to Missouri as an example of a state with the necessary infrastructure to defeat an anti-trans ballot measure. There, voters rejected Amendment 3, which attempted to both overturn a 2024 abortion rights amendment and to ban gender-affirming care for minors.
“When they knew [Amendment 3] was coming back around, they had the resources, they had the infrastructure, and they had the people ready to go,” they said. “I think what we’re looking at in states—particularly Nebraska and Arizona—is: What is the sort of state infrastructure that’s needed to fight these campaigns? What’s the money that’s needed to defeat them?”
Multiple trans rights groups said the movement needs to continue growing its base.
“We know we have a ways to go as a movement and as a country to help our communities and our elected leaders understand the stakes for all of us when the basic equality of a few are put up for debate,” Schifeling said. “We will continue to build power through our efforts to change hearts, minds, and policies using every tool we have until everyone’s equality is guaranteed.”
Chestnut specified that advocates need to build a multiracial, working class, multi-issue coalition.
Republicans spent an estimated $183 million on anti-trans attack ads during the 2026 midterms campaign season. While the culture war didn’t deter people from voting for Democrats in record numbers, the ballot measures still codified anti-trans policies into state constitutions and statutes.
And now that voters have shifted left, the work ahead, Chestnut said, is to center trans people in that fight.
“It’s very evident that voters cannot be bought, cannot be schemed into thinking that these billionaires and millionaires are working in our best interest,” he said. “Instead, it’s the people on the ground having those conversations about what it means to care for our neighbors, what it means to feed our families, what it means to make sure that people have health care when more Americans than ever don’t have health care right now.”
“That, to me, is a bigger bodily autonomy issue,” Chestnut added.
