Maine residents have filed a lawsuit challenging their Secretary of State’s decision to validate a petition to get an anti-trans referendum on November’s ballot.

Plaintiffs claim that thousands of the signatures collected by Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine are invalid, local CBS affiliate WGME reports.

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Maine just released the wording of the anti-trans ballot question people will vote on in November

In February, the group, which is entirely bankrolled by out-of-state billionaire Richard Uihlein, submitted nearly 80,000 signatures to get its initiative on the ballot. The measure would ask Maine voters to decide whether transgender students in the state should continue to have access to school bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity and whether trans girls should be allowed to participate in girls’ sports.

While state officials verified just over 71,000 of those signatures, that still puts the effort well over the 67,682 required, according to the Maine Beacon.

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But the lawsuit filed by three Maine residents claims that an additional 7,000 signatures should be invalidated. Among those, they say they have identified hundreds of duplicate signatures, while hundreds of others do not include the required information. Dozens of others, they claim, are signatures of people who are not registered to vote in Maine, according to WGME.

The outlet reports that the State Attorney General’s Office has admitted to making mistakes in validating the signatures, and that Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) has conceded as much in court filings, but says Protect Girls Sports in Maine still collected enough signatures for the referendum to appear on the ballot.

“Several of these challenges fail as a matter of law, and the court should reject these challenges,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Bolton said, according to WGME. “Validating a petition containing nearly 80,000 signatures in the extremely compressed timeframe allowed by statute makes some amount of error inevitable.”

Tim Woodcock, a lawyer representing Protect Girls Sports in Maine, told the outlet the group is confident “that the petition-gathering process was well done” and “in sufficient number to withstand this challenge.”

As Them and WGME note, the Maine Human Rights Act bans discrimination based on gender, so even if voters were to approve the measure in November, it would likely face legal challenges.

Critics of the anti-trans referendum say it would result in children facing harassment and discrimination.

“Over and over, Mainers have said we will not allow bullying and discrimination in our schools,” Gia Drew, executive director of EqualityMaine, told Beacon last month. “If voters approve it, this measure would embolden adults and members of the public to harass and scrutinize student athletes who just want to be on the team.”

Opponents have also blasted Uihlein’s funding of the referendum.

“This isn’t a homegrown effort,” Destie Hohman Sprague of the Maine Women’s Lobby told the Beacon. “We really want Mainers to understand that this is not about sports, it’s about a national extremist attempt to take over Maine politics and drive the conversation in November.”

Uihlein and Protect Girls Sports in Maine’s efforts come after Maine Gov. Janet Mills repeatedly clashed with the president over trans issues. When the president threatened to withhold federal education funding in retaliation for Mills’ refusal to comply with the administration’s anti-trans agenda last year, the state successfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the release of the $3 million in congressionally appropriated funding. The U.S. Department of Justice has also sued Maine, challenging the state’s trans-inclusive interpretation of Title IX, a legal battle that is currently ongoing.

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