Doctors, nurses and educators oppose Washington ballot measure that would require genital exams for girls’ teams
Doctors, nurses and other adults who work with queer and trans teens are opposing a Washington ballot initiative on the November ballot that would bar trans girls from school sports and require genital exams for any student seeking to compete on girls’ teams. Kelsey Gellner, a Seattle-based pediatric nurse, called the mandated genital exams “invasive and extreme.”
The proposal, known as Initiative 638, was introduced by Let’s Go Washington, a political action committee founded by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, a multimillionaire who has bankrolled many conservative initiatives. It is widely regarded as the most restrictive of four statewide measures on November ballots that target transgender youths’ participation in school sports and would mandate proof of female anatomy through expensive genetic or hormone tests or a genital exam. Boys are not required to undergo the same sex-verification process, and similar restrictions have already been implemented in 27 states. The wave of measures followed a supreme court decision in June that ruled such bans are constitutional, while dozens of hospitals have discontinued care for trans youth after Trump threatened to withhold federal funding.
Gellner, who is a board member of the Washington State Nurses Association, said the ballot initiative felt like a violation of her duty as a medical professional and described taking action against it by speaking at press conferences, canvassing and door-knocking across the state as midterm election organizing ramped up. “I tell my kids and patients that my No 1 job is to keep them safe,” she said. “I can say with confidence that girls do not want to have an unnecessary exam that creates an unsafe barrier.”
More than 140 healthcare providers have issued a statement opposing Initiative 638, organizers said, and unions including the Washington Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are mobilizing members. Libby Loft, a family doctor in Spokane, said the measure’s language would prevent physicians from relying on birth certificates and would force clinicians into examinations they consider inappropriate for sports physicals: “The way the measure is written says that I, as a physician, cannot rely on a birth certificate,” Loft said. “I have to examine someone’s reproductive anatomy – that seems inappropriate to me for a sports physical.”
Medical groups and opponents have challenged proponents’ claims that the sex-verification requirement is a standard endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics; the medical group has publicly rejected that assertion, organizers said. Gellner contrasted a genital exam with a routine sports physical and invoked the Larry Nassar case when warning about the risks of intrusive medical requirements: “While I believe that a vast majority of people who enter the medical profession do it for the right reason, writing legislation that opens the door to predators is just not responsible,” Gellner said.
No Hate in Washington State has spent a year and a half building a coalition against two ballot measures it regards as harmful to LGBTQ+ rights: the sports-focused initiative and a separate proposal to expand parents’ access to public school records. Campaign manager Libby Watson said the No Hate campaign has amassed nearly 600 endorsers, including US senator Patty Murray, Planned Parenthood and the Washington State Nurses Association, and is powered by more than 6,300 volunteers conducting door-knocking, phone-banking and canvassing. Watson said public awareness has increased and that messaging about the unequal impact on girls and the invasiveness of genital exams has resonated: “We have people power,” Watson said. “We have many people who haven’t been involved before but care enough about beating these initiatives so that Washington remains a safe state for queer young people.”
Teachers, coaches and school counselors also spoke against the measures. John Gallagher, a Seattle-based high school teacher and former cross-country coach, called the policy “incredibly exclusionary” and said: “It’s a lot of effort to exclude a very small population of kids who are just trying to be themselves.” Jaime Fineman-McKinney, a school counselor in Tacoma, warned that the school-records proposal could force counselors to out students to parents and put them in danger: “If they’re coming to me as a trusted person and I have to then out them, I just put them in a very unsafe situation,” she said. Loft said she was not surprised that medical professionals have organized against the measures: “We all have the goal of helping our kids live healthy lives,” she said.
Both measures will be decided by voters in November, and No Hate campaign leaders say they are expanding voter contact efforts to try to defeat the two proposals at the polls.