Proponents of a ballot measure that would ban transgender students from using bathrooms that don’t match their biological sex want Arizona’s secretary of state to investigate a website opposing the measure.
Earlier this year, GOP state lawmakers passed the Protect Girls Sports in Arizona Act, which will be on the November ballot as Proposition 318.
The Yes on 318 campaign has a website called “Protect Girls Sports in Az,” but an unidentified competing entity made a website called “Protect Girls Sports Az.”
The two sites look very similar, but Protect Girls Sports AZ tells people to vote “no” on the measure.
Yes on 318 chair and attorney Tim La Sota believes that’s illegal.
“It's really a stunning example of what I think is — even implicates, criminal statutes that deal with defrauding people into voting for something they didn't intend to vote for,” La Sota said.
La Sota argued their opponents’ failure to disclose who’s paying for the website is a violation of Arizona’s campaign finance laws. He wants Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to put a stop to it.
State lawmakers and Alexander Kolodin, the Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state, said opponents are resorting to misleading tactics because their position isn’t popular.
“What father out there wants their minor child, their minor daughter, in a bathroom with somebody with male anatomy? I can't imagine how horrified I would be if that happened,” Kolodin said. “I think every parent in this state can say the same thing.”
Trans girls on Arizona teams already illegal
In 2022, Republican legislators passed a law that banned trans girls from playing girls sports.
The National Center for LGBTQ Rights challenged the law in court but dropped the case after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld similar laws in Idaho and West Virginia earlier this year. That law is currently in effect.
GOP Congressman Andy Biggs said as the father of daughters who played softball, he’s offended by the idea of them having to play against men.
KJZZ then needled Biggs for playing on the Arizona Senate’s coed softball team when he was Senate president, but he said that’s different because it was just a “mush ball” and a rec game.
“We shouldn't trivialize this by saying, ‘Oh, this is just like a beer league in softball.’ It isn't. This is about competition, sometimes at the highest levels, where you are importing a biological male to come in because you want a competitive advantage,” Biggs, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, said.
What the measure would do
The proponents of Prop. 318 argue it’s about protecting girls’ sports by ensuring that boys, or trans girls, can’t play on girls’ teams.
But since that’s already a part of Arizona law, the measure’s real effects are banning trans students from using bathrooms, showers and locker rooms in schools with sports programs or athletic facilities.
“What is happening now is we are seeing men's sports survives, co-ed sports survives, but you have men coming into the girls’ sports place and wiping it out. That is the solution that is being provided,” Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) said.
He noted that if voters pass Prop. 318 into law, it will have stronger legal protections because it will be voter-protected. That means it would be much harder for Democrats to ever undo the trans sports ban if they controlled the Legislature.
Former Arizona Treasurer Jeff DeWit is the honorary co-chair of the Yes on 318 campaign. He said the measure will add coed sports into state law.
The measure actually doesn’t do that. It keeps coed in the law and simply changes the term “coed” to the longer form “coeducational.”
Who's behind the website?
The National Center for LGBTQ Rights said Monday that it’s not involved in the anti-Prop. 318 website and doesn’t know who is behind it.
There is another anti-Prop. 318 website called Vote No on AZ Prop 318. That one is run by Will of the People Arizona, a program under Progress Arizona. Progress Arizona is a progressive nonprofit.
Progress Arizona Digital Director Abigail Jackson said her group isn’t behind the Protect Girls Sports AZ website either.
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