Washington was the headline. For years the state’s Democratic lawmakers had shut down proposals to restrict transgender athletes in school sports. On Tuesday the voters went around them. Initiative 638 passed with 56.6% in favor and 43.4% opposed, the Associated Press called, making Washington the first state to approve a sex-based separation of K-12 school sports at the ballot box.

The measure requires every athlete who wants to play on a girls’ team to submit a statement from a health care provider verifying her sex, based on reproductive anatomy, genetics or naturally produced testosterone.

“One girl losing a podium spot is enough for us to take action,” Hallie Herzberg, a spokesperson for sponsor Let’s Go Washington, told MyNorthwest.

Nebraska writes it into the constitution

Nebraska went further than any other state. Initiative Measure 442 carried about 68% of the vote, enshrining the ban in the state constitution. Public K-12 schools and colleges, plus any private schools that compete against them, must now designate teams as male, female or co-ed, and female teams are closed to students the state defines as male.

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The amendment also bars athletes from using locker rooms designated for the opposite sex and, from January 1, lets anyone harmed by a knowing violation sue for damages. Nebraska already had a 2025 state law requiring schools to designate teams by sex and verify students’ sex through a physician; the vote locks that policy into the state’s founding document.

Arizona expands, Colorado tightens

Arizona’s Proposition 318 passed with 58.94% voting yes and 41.06% voting no, according to early results. It defines sex as the designation on an athlete’s original birth certificate and extends existing restrictions to private schools and outside athletic associations such as Little League. It also bars students from using restrooms and locker rooms that do not match that birth-certificate designation.

Colorado’s Proposition 134 was the closest of the four. The Colorado Sun called the race on November 5 after the measure built a lead of 52.7% to 47.3%. It requires every school and sports association that receives state money, from kindergarten through college, to assign athletes to teams based on biological sex defined by reproductive cells.

Colorado voters did draw a line. A separate measure, Proposition 135, which would have barred health care providers from performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors, was defeated the same night.

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The policy ladder was already built

The ballot wins land on top of policy changes that happened earlier in Trump’s second term. In February 2025 he signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which conditioned federal education funding on compliance. The day after, the NCAA rewrote its participation policy to limit women’s competition to athletes assigned female at birth.

According to Front Office Sports, four states passed restrictions this week, with Arizona and Nebraska called first and Colorado and Washington trending toward passage before being called in the days that followed.

The Nebraska amendment’s damages provision for private lawsuits takes effect on January 1.

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