CONTROVERSY
ON THE BALLOT
Two youth-facing initiatives on Washington state’s general election ballot have ignited fierce debates over student wellbeing and trans rights at school, leaving many to wonder how they would impact the youth they claim to protect.
WRITTEN BY NATALIE FEARN, MATTHEW FUREY, DANNY POTTHARST, AND SOEUN SON
ILLUSTRATION BY ARIELLE FANTASIA
[THURSDAY, AUGUST 27] This November, voters in Washington state will encounter several ballot initiatives backed by Let’s Go Washington, a conservative political action committee founded and sponsored by right-wing donor and hedge fund executive Brian Heywood that’s previously attempted (and largely failed) to overturn a number of progressive state-level policies and systems, including our carbon credit market, long-term care insurance, and capital gains tax.
Two of the initiatives Let’s Go Washington has put on the November ballot directly affect the rights of transgender and queer kids in the state: IL26-001, “Restoring the Parents’ Bill of Rights,” and IL26-638, “Protecting Fairness in Girls’ Sports.” The first initiative would potentially overturn or loosen protections around sensitive student records, such as school counseling and social-work data, and open up those records to parents who ask for them; and the second initiative would effectively ban trans girls’ participation in girls’ sports, and force all girls to verify their sex in order to participate. Like similar measures passed in other parts of the country, the two initiatives bill themselves as efforts to protect “parental rights” and “fairness in girls’ sports,” respectively.
As young adults who live and attend school in Washington state, we’re concerned by how these policies, if enacted, might affect our peers, especially queer and trans youth in Washington state. To figure out who these initiatives are meant to serve and protect, and to understand how they would impact young people, we interviewed student athletes, social workers, health experts, and representatives of the campaigns for and against the initiatives. We then compiled this report, designed to outline the basic facts of these initiatives and their potential consequences.
In our view, what our conversations uncovered is the unfortunate but unsurprising irony of policy-making in Washington state: The last things considered by youth-focused policies are the thoughts and feelings of youth themselves.
THE BASICS
This isn’t the first time Brian Heywood has backed and funded initiatives on the Washington state ballot. In the last four years, he’s funneled $11 million into 20 conservative initiatives — everything from a capital gains tax ban to a Climate Commitment Act repeal — in statewide elections. Heywood-backed initiatives’ rate of success is relatively low, but the ones Let’s Go Washington is spearheading this election season have successfully cleared the state’s initiative signature threshold.
Initiative 001 would reinstate Initiative 2081, a ballot measure called a “Parental Bill of Rights,” which was passed in 2024, and which entitles parents and legal guardians of children in state public schools to access their children's public school records. The measure lists certain rights of parents and guardians of public-school children. A Democrat-backed amended version of the bill, House Bill 1296, passed in 2025, and it ensures that students’ medical and counseling records from school remain confidential. This year, Let’s Go Washington (which backed Initiative 2081) is advancing Initiative 001 in an effort to repeal HB 1296 and, according to its website, “strengthen communication between parents and schools.”
Initiative 638 would require sex verification for all girls in public K-12 schools who want to compete in school sports. Currently, Washington state law compels public schools to permit students to compete in sports teams that align with their gender identity. Under Initiative 638, verification would be satisfied through a genital exam, genetic testing, or hormone testing. Birth certificates would no longer be considered a valid form of identification.
INITIATIVE 001: ‘THEIR SECRETS WOULD NOT BE SAFE’
According to Let’s Go Washington, Initiative 001’s goal is to affirm parents’ rights to access their children’s school records and thereby increase transparency between schools and parents.
“Parents deserve the right to know what’s going on with their students in schools,” said Hallie Herzberg, Let’s Go Washington’s Director of Communications. “Parents are the primary stakeholders of their children; parents are the ones that interact with their children 95 percent of their lives. Teachers, with their best intentions, may only see a child for an hour a day.”
But opponents claim the initiative might force queer and trans kids out of the closet against their consent, and erode schools’ ability to withhold sensitive records from potentially abusive households.
Opponents interpret Initiative 001 in the context of an ongoing youth mental health crisis; about 1 in 10 teens in Washington state feel they do not have anyone to talk to when they are struggling with depression. Libby Watson, the campaign manager for No Hate in Washington State, the lead organization opposing the two ballot initiatives, explained that Initiative 001 risks exacerbating these trends by discouraging students from seeking the support of school staff.
“It takes away [students’] ability to work with or talk to a trusted adult at school, whether that's a school counselor, a teacher or a coach,” Watson said. “[Initiative 001 would] have a devastating impact on youths’ desire to talk to trusted adults at school at all, knowing that their secrets would not be safe.”
According to Shelby Hearn, Director of LGBTQIA+ Student Services at Whitman College in Walla Walla, youth privacy is “massively beneficial” to youth development. School is an important site for that development, including for students with affirming home environments, Hearn said.
“It’s so important for a child to be able to talk to a teacher that they trust or a counselor that they trust, and that what they share doesn’t make it back to a parent until that kid is ready — even if their caregivers are ultimately very supportive,” Hearn said. “It’s still an important part of a process around self-definition that information is shared on that person’s terms and on their timeline.”
Herzberg described the initiative from Let’s Go Washington’s perspective while rejecting the opposition’s argument, which, in her view, demonizes parents.
“[Initiative 001] allows the parents to know what’s going on with their student and be able to intervene with the counselor, with the support of their teachers that love them and their friends and family that love them,” Herzberg said. “[Our] argument shifts it from being, ‘Parents are bad and they can’t be trusted,’ to, ‘Parents and schools have to work together in order for kids to have the best outcomes.’”
But the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) already codifies parents’ right to access their students’ information from public schools, according to Isabella Kent, a sexual and reproductive health educator at Planned Parenthood. Where the key difference lies, Kent explained, is in I-2081’s (and now Initiative 001’s) broadened definition of public school records to include medical and health records. Under this definition, parents would be granted access to records from student counseling sessions, and they would be informed in advance about medical services offered to their children, which could exacerbate young people’s experiences with depression, anxiety, and other mental-health challenges.
“If parents are the ones causing harm to a student, whether that’s emotional and mental violence versus actual physical and sexual abuse, they could still access those records,” Kent said. “The Parental Bill of Rights is giving parents more access to those private experiences of youth.”
Herzberg disputed the claim that children in abusive households will be negatively impacted by Initiative 001, claiming that current legal protections for children who live in abusive households or with a parent who is under investigation for abuse or neglect will remain in place.
Initiative 001 does include a clause stating that schools can withhold medical and health records from parents under investigation for child abuse or neglect; this is compliant with state law. However, according to a Pacifica Law Group memorandum provided to No Hate in Washington State, the initiative “reduces the categories of student records that schools may withhold in such circumstances.” Children of parents charged with or under criminal investigation for abuse or neglect will not be protected, and schools would need to make health care, social work, counseling, and disciplinary records accessible to them.
Initiative 001’s detractors are especially concerned about the text’s impacts on queer and trans youth, even as they’re not explicitly named in it. If Initiative 001 risks forcing educators to release confidential reports to parents who have been charged with or are undergoing investigation for child abuse or neglect, the initiative stands to especially impact LGBTQ+ youth, who are the disproportionate subjects of domestic violence and youth homelessness. In Washington state, there were 117,629 reports of child abuse or neglect in 2024.
Some opponents to Initiative 001 also wonder whether the ballot measure’s focus on parental access to student records misses a more pressing factor: whether enough parents are getting to know their children in loving, safe ways.
“Parents shouldn’t need to access their students' records to get to know them,” said Kent of Planned Parenthood. “If a parent needs to know that information, why do they already not know their child in that way? What conversations aren't happening at home? What environment is not being created?”
INITIATIVE 638: “A LOSE-LOSE FOR GIRLS EVERYWHERE”
Initiative 638 more explicitly focuses on trans youth, and threatens to segregate them in the name of “fairness in girls’ sports.”
Herzberg of Let’s Go Washington said the initiative was requested by student athletes in Wenatchee and Tumwater, who have alleged in recent years that they were forced to compete against trans athletes.
The initiative states that students choosing to participate in individual or group athletics intended solely for girls are required to present documentation signed by the student’s personal health care provider that confirms their biological sex, “relying only on one or more of the following: The student's reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
It also claims that, per state law, “routine physical examination” is already a prerequisite for adolescents to participate in athletics. According to Herzberg, during these physicals, a student athlete’s doctor verifies their biological sex with a medical record, general history of care information or one of the three options outlined in the initiative.
In a previous interview with The 19th News, Herzberg said that birth certificates are not sufficient for verifying a student’s sex assigned at birth because state law permits minors to change their birth certificate's sex designation with their parents’ permission. She clarified that Initiative 638 would permit student athletes to provide a Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) sports physical form documenting their sex assigned at birth as a valid replacement.
Opponents of the initiative fear it may expose girls to potentially traumatic and even abusive genital exams.
“[Initiative 638] would force all girls to have their sex assigned at birth verified by a healthcare provider with an exam of reproductive anatomy, which is a genital exam, genetic or hormone testing,” said Libby Watson of No Hate in Washington State.
The latter two options for sex verification, Watson pointed out, are expensive alternatives to the first, and they would also require access to healthcare coverage. A valid WIAA sports physical form would necessitate access to a primary care provider. Considering that each county in Washington state is facing a shortage of healthcare providers, this may not be feasible for all families.
While genital exams are a typical part of annual pediatric care during childhood and adolescence to ensure that youth are appropriately progressing through the stages of puberty, current sports physicals are intended to assess whether a student is healthy enough to compete. They do not require confirmation of biological sex through a physical exam or genetic or hormone testing. Sports physical forms sent to schools previously had checkboxes for indicating gender, but these were removed in 2019. Initiative 638 would add them back.
Watson said that current sports clearance exams “definitely don’t involve nudity of any kind” or “needing to see what’s in your underwear.”
Mykah Westgaard, a recent graduate of Lindberg High School in Renton and a longtime student athlete, has never had a gential exam as part of a sports physical. Upon learning about Initiative 638, she was bewildered.
“When I found out it was just girls [who would potentially undergo genital inspections], I was so in shock that it was such a publicly accepted, sexist practice,” Westgaard said. “I was surprised they were able to say that without being ashamed of themselves. It’s such an invasive thing to do to children — especially young girls, who are already going to experience so many violating things as they grow up just because they’re girls.”
Initiative 638’s detractors see this stipulation as a feature, not a bug of anti-trans legislation, which often scapegoats trans athletes (of which the WIAA estimates there are about 10 out of over 200,000 student athletes in the state) as the enemies of competitively sound athletics.
“A lot of adults... if they stopped to talk to girls that play sports... they'd find that most athletes don't care about [trans athletes playing on their sports teams],” said Isabella Kent of Planned Parenthood. “Most athletes have a sense of camaraderie with teammates [and] want other people to succeed and do well. They don't feel a sense of competition with other people in sports because of their identity.”
One such athlete is Zoe Wilson, who has competed with trans athletes during her time at Inglemore High School in Kenmore.
“Some people's argument is that these trans athletes would have a genetic advantage,” Wilson said. “And as somebody who has played with trans athletes and non-binary athletes, I see no genetic advantage, or advantage at all.”
Westgaard echoed Wilson’s sentiment and suggested the “genetic advantage” argument is misogynistic.
“When people give that connotation that, ‘Oh, someone can transition, hop into a female sport and dominate,’” Westgaard said, “we’re degrading women’s sports; we’re not acknowledging the skill and the determination and commitment it takes to become good at a female sport.”
Westgaard believes that if Let’s Go WA was truly invested in promoting fair athletics for girls, it would be advancing policies focused on inclusion, like equitable funding of school sports and prioritization of athletes’ mental health, not exclusion.
“Inclusivity does matter,” Westgaard said, “and we should be encouraging children to play sports no matter what.”
A POTENTIAL STATE OF EMERGENCY
Most stakeholder testimonies suggest that, despite their framing as “protective” measures, Initiatives 001 and 638 may threaten to make school and family life that much more isolating for students across Washington, and they’re emblematic of institutional and discursive processes in statewide politics that ostracize youth.
These initiatives come at a time when LGBTQ+ people are fleeing states that have passed anti-trans legislation, many of whom eye Washington state as a sanctuary. Thousands of trans and queer people have moved to this state for survival and self-determination — which has compelled local LGBTQ+-focused and resource-strained nonprofits to call for a state of emergency. The potential passage of the ballot initiatives, which affect some of the most disenfranchised residents of Washington state, and have downstream effects on queer and trans rights in Washington, has activists wondering if a related state of emergency looms.
Queer youths’ wellbeing likely stands threatened by hostile legislation. Ninety percent of LGBTQ+ youth respondents said in 2025 that anti-LGBTQ+ legislation had caused them stress or anxiety, with 38 percent of respondents having considered moving to a different, safer state. Exacerbating the matter is the growing support for anti-trans policies in the United States.
Washington’s legislative process continues to allow for ballot initiatives, a system with little oversight that enables a select few to fund measures that bypass our elected representatives. Let’s Go Washington is also aiming to repeal the Millionaires Tax this November, which state officials have said would fund schools, including free school lunches for youth under the age of 19; in aggregate, the group’s platform calls into question how much kids’ wellbeing drives their slate of ballot initiatives.
As youth in our state continue to get short shrift in the political process, with policies like Initiatives 001 and 638 largely drafted and debated without their say, it’s now up to voters to decide whether Let’s Go Washington’s proposals have a place in our state’s legal canon.
Natalie Fearn, Matthew Furey, Danny Pottharst, and Soeun Son were Fellows this summer at the Washington Bus, a youth-led organization focusing on building political power and leadership among young Washingtonians.
Arielle Fantasia is a Seattle-based artist. You can follow their work on Instagram.