Prop. 318, the Protect Girls' Sports in Arizona Act, is all about bathrooms and locker rooms

LAUREN GILGER: Transgender students competing in girls sports is one of the culture war issues that most Americans actually agree on.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, 73% of Americans say they’re uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that don’t match their sex at birth; 66% said they’d support a law that made them compete on teams that do match their sex at birth.

But that’s not what’s on your ballot to decide this November with Proposition 318, even though the campaign for the proposition is called Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez is here to explain. Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so Prop. 318 doesn’t talk about trans sports at all. Is that the case here?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s really about bathrooms and locker rooms. So we actually already passed legislation a few years ago, which went through the whole court process of being challenged and then approved — and that was about sports and keeping them separate.

So it was banning what Republicans call “biological males” — which means in this case, trans girls — from competing in girls sports teams. So that’s already Arizona state law. And this measure that Republican lawmakers put up on the ballot is specifically about not letting schools that have athletic programs or athletic associations let trans kids use the bathroom that doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth.

LAUREN GILGER: So this has to do with bathrooms, locker rooms, things like that?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Those other ideas, right, of trans sports are in the measure, but they’re already on the books. So the only effective part, essentially, is this part about bathrooms. Is that right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, which is why it’s kind of weird to me because it keeps being marketed as this bill about sports and about athletics and about “protecting girls’ sports,” quote-unquote. And that’s what the Republican state lawmakers on the campaign trail have been saying, you know, like, “We’re taking this action to protect your kids, and the fairness and the safety and all this stuff.” When really, the bill doesn’t have anything to do with that.

LAUREN GILGER: So I mentioned, Camryn, how public polling on transgender athletes in sports is pretty clear at this point. What about polling on the actual part of this bill that would make changes to state law here about where transgender students can use the bathroom or locker room?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: So it’s a little more fuzzy. And like you mentioned, I mean, I think we’ve seen Republicans over the last several years through a process of kind of like trial and error and testing out the public feel that, like, this is an issue that they can campaign on, right?

People typically don’t approve of the idea of trans people in sports, even if they don’t play sports or even if it doesn’t affect them personally. They kind of think, “Oh, well, that doesn’t seem fair.” This, you know, is like tangential to that, and they’re tying it to that.

But I think this specific issue of the bathrooms and locker rooms, I do think that it has a good shot of passing. I think that there’s a large group of Arizonans who would still not approve of, you know, trans kids being able to use bathrooms. But I think there are fewer people who can see this as a concern.

LAUREN GILGER: This proposition survived an attempt to get it thrown off the ballot by opponents, right? What was that about?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Well, the opponents of the bill were basically Democrats. And they were saying, “Oh, this is an issue of single subject because, you know, this is about bathrooms, but it’s also about sports, and you can’t have that under the same piece of legislation.”

And the judge said no. And I think that was a bit of a fishing expedition, kind of. I mean, they didn’t approve of the ballot measure, so they would have challenged it, I think, kind of no matter what, and they had to go after it for something. But the single-subject rule, in this case, the judge said it’s not too broad of a measure.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so measures that end up on the ballot have to be about one thing, this single-subject rule. What about the opposition campaign here? Has there been much of one, Camryn?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah. I mean, we had a press conference back in August at the state Capitol where some of the big candidates, including Andy Biggs, who’s running for governor, and his running mate came out, and they were saying that they were supporting this legislation and how important it is for the kids. And sort of using it in their campaign as well, even though, you know, it was the state Legislature who passed it, and neither of them were, like, involved in that. And it’s a separate measure from their race. But they, again, talked about it as a sports issue. And they brought in this young athlete to talk about sports and fairness in sports, even though that’s not what the measure says.

LAUREN GILGER: We also heard from state Rep. Alex Kolodin at that press conference about this measure. Let’s hear a little bit about what he had to say, what the messaging was like.

ALEX KOLODIN: What father out there wants their minor child, their minor daughter, in a bathroom with somebody with male anatomy?

LAUREN GILGER: So what about on the Democratic side, Camryn? As you mentioned, they’re kind of opposed to this, but are they wading into this one?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I think Democrats are trying to convince the public that this is nothing more than a political stunt and a culture war issue. And I think that people understand that it’s a culture war issue, and people understand that there’s politics at play here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will vote against it, if that makes sense.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so let’s talk then about predictions, maybe. You said you wouldn’t be surprised if this did pass come November in Arizona, given the way this kind of issue polls. But this is also happening in a year in which Democrats are expected to do pretty well here and across the country. How does that broader political context play into this one?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, I think that if this measure passes, it would be more narrow than maybe in a different election cycle. And I think that the Democrats do have a good chance of a blue wave. Everything that we’ve seen kind of indicates that.

So could this issue get swept up in it? Maybe. But it’s also possible — you know, Arizona voters have a tendency to maybe vote yes on one thing and no on another thing if that doesn’t align with their personal values. Like, you could vote for a Democrat and a Republican, for example, on the same ballot.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, which doesn’t happen as many places, but definitely happens here. All right. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez with our Politics Desk joining us. Camryn, thank you so much, as always. Appreciate it.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to an editing error, the headline has been updated to correct the proposition number.