A group of Maine residents have filed a lawsuit to remove this fall’s ballot question aimed at banning trans student athletes from participating in girls’ sports and limiting school bathroom and locker-room access for gender nonconforming individuals.
Reports LGBTQ Nation:
The lawsuit filed by three Maine residents claims that an additional 7,000 signatures [of the 80K collected to but the question on the ballot] 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.”
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. …
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.”