washington might make every girl athlete get her sex verified to catch a handful of trans kids. be so for real.

The Washington State Capitol in Olympia, for illustration. Photo: Nils Huenerfuerst, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via the Associated Press, The 19th and KNKX/KUOW

Here is the number to hold onto. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, which runs high school sports in the state, told The 19th that it knows of about 10 trans middle and high schoolers who play sports, out of more than 200,000 students who compete. Let's Go Washington, the group behind the ballot measure aimed at them, told the AP it has counted 16.

Ten, or sixteen. On Nov. 3, Washington votes on whether to build a verification system for every girl who wants to play on a girls' team, to find them.

what i-638 actually says

Initiative 638 would bar trans girls from girls' school teams and, per the text the AP quotes, require a healthcare provider to verify a student's "biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: The student's reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels." KNKX and KUOW describe that as a genital exam, a chromosome test or a hormone test.

The campaign insists it is nothing of the sort. "We see that as being as simple as a checkbox," spokesperson Hallie Herzberg told the AP. On X last week, Let's Go Washington posted that "The initiative doesn't require or authorize exams" and that a doctor could rely on "existing medical history forms, or a history of treating the student." Dr. Libby Loft, who opposes it, told the AP the language calls for a genital inspection as part of a physical, or expensive testing, to "weed out an estimated five or 10 girls in the state of Washington, trans girls." One voter in Renton put it more simply to the AP: "medical exams of girls' genitalia is, like, Middle Ages."

If it really is a checkbox, it is a checkbox written in the vocabulary of reproductive anatomy. Voters can decide which part of the sentence to believe.

blue states, first time

Colorado votes on its own version the same day, one that also reaches college sports, which we covered when it qualified. The AP calls it the first time the question has gone straight to voters rather than lawmakers, and says 27 states already have such bans. Elected officials in both states had rejected bans, so the campaigns went around them.

The money is lopsided. The AP reports that Let's Go Washington, funded by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, has raised more than $7.8 million for I-638 and two other measures on the same ballot, nearly twice what the ban's opponents have. The group's own unreleased poll, as KNKX/KUOW reported it, has the measure at 56%. Its spokesperson's theory of the race, to the same reporters: "They will support us, and they will stand up for girls, but they will do it in the safety of their own ballot."

Gay Twitter is barely in this fight. In our scan of X last week, the I-638 conversation belonged to the Yes campaign, the state GOP and conservative accounts, almost all of it about one cross-country runner in Camas. Which is the whole campaign in miniature: a few kids, a lot of adults, and a ballot due Nov. 3.