Petition to restrict trans student rights may be removed from Maine ballot

Mainers may no longer be voting this November on a ballot question to restrict the rights of transgender students to access bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams aligning with their gender identity. 

That’s because a state official determined that petitioners did not collect enough valid signatures, falling 500 short of the minimum required threshold to qualify for a citizen-led ballot initiative. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Katherine McBrien, who presided over a hearing last week to determine signature validity, is recommending to the Maine Secretary of State’s Office that more than 12,000 signatures that may have been collected improperly be invalidated, the office confirmed on May 21.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows will issue a final decision May 26.

The ballot initiative seeks to require sports teams and school facilities to be separated by biological sex as opposed to gender identity, is at odds with the Maine Human Rights Act. 

Tim Woodcock, an attorney with Eaton Peabody representing the petition campaign, said they are reviewing the recommended decision closely. “We are continuing our defense of the Protect Girls Sports ballot measure and will be filing our objections to the recommended decision before the May 23 deadline,” Woodcock said.

The campaign’s signature gathering practices were cast into doubt when three challengers claimed that 7,900 signatures previously deemed valid by the Secretary of State’s Office should be disqualified in Superior Court. On April 24, Justice Deborah Cashman remanded the challenge to the Secretary of State’s Office for a final determination. Last week, McBrien and Assistant Attorney General Jon Bolton held an hours-long hearing during which both sides presented their arguments. 

Over the course of the hearing, a pattern of negligence within the campaign emerged, with signature collectors admitting to leaving forms unattended, among other infractions. 

“There were some significant areas of concern around the signature gathering practices here, and the rules exist to make sure that only a sufficient number of valid signatures are submitted,” said Ben Stafford, a partner in the national legal firm Elias Law Group representing the challengers of the “Protect Girls Sports” petition. “That didn’t happen here.”

McBrien sent her determination that 67,150 signatures were valid and 12,542 were invalid to both parties’ attorneys.

The number of signatures required to place the petition question on the November ballot is 67,682. The parties have until Saturday at midnight to respond.

How the signatures were deemed invalid

Much of the hearing focused on signature gatherers leaving petitions behind unattended, which several community members documented and attested to. It also called into question some campaign workers who failed to sign a circulator’s affidavit until months after the signatures were submitted to the secretary of state.

More than 3,800 signatures were deemed invalid by McBrien through the hearing process, including 1,037 due to unattended petitions and more than 2,300 due to a missing circulator’s affidavit.

“We think that those determinations are very well founded by both actual record that has been presented and bolstered at this point, and then the underlying legal standards,” Stafford said.

This story was first published by the Maine Morning Star and is republished here under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.