Washington Lawmakers Declined to Act on Two Ballot Initiatives. Both Now Head to a November Vote.

Washington's Legislature had until March 12 to act on two citizen initiatives that had already qualified for the ballot with signature totals no Let's Go Washington campaign in the state had matched before. It let the deadline pass on both. Initiative 26-001, which would restore parts of the 2024 Parents' Bill of Rights that Democrats rolled back in 2025, and Initiative 26-638, which would require documentation of a student's sex at birth to play girls' school sports, are now headed to Washington voters in November instead, alongside a third Let's Go Washington measure on the same ballot.

Both measures came from Let's Go Washington, the group founded by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood that has now run several successful signature drives in the state. Neither initiative got a legislative hearing. House Speaker Laurie Jinkins and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, both Democrats, said explicitly that the decision would be left to voters rather than to lawmakers, a choice that is itself built into how Washington's initiative-to-the-legislature process is designed to work.

What Initiative 26-001 Would Actually Restore

The 2024 Parents' Bill of Rights, itself a Let's Go Washington initiative that the Legislature adopted outright, gave parents broad rights to review their children's school records, health information, and instructional materials. In 2025, Democratic lawmakers amended that law, narrowing parental access to certain student medical and counseling records. Initiative 26-001 would reverse those 2025 changes and restore the original 2024 language, according to reporting from MyNorthwest.

Heywood framed the measure in blunt terms: "We don't co-parent with the government. No government employee can care about or love your child like you do." Opponents, including groups representing LGBTQ+ youth, argue the rollback matters precisely because it affects a narrow category of records: those touching sexual health, gender identity, or domestic abuse disclosures made to a school counselor. Their concern is that restoring full parental access to those specific records could out a transgender or questioning student to a family that isn't supportive, or discourage a student in an abusive home from confiding in a counselor at all. Supporters counter that parents, not schools, bear legal responsibility for their children and are entitled to know what's in their own kids' files. The dispute isn't over the bulk of the Parents' Bill of Rights, which both sides largely accept: it's over this one narrow category of records that Democrats specifically carved out in 2025, and Initiative 26-001 would put that carve-out back to a public vote rather than leaving it to the Legislature that made it.

What Initiative 26-638 Would Require of Every Girl Who Wants to Play

The second measure, formally titled the Protecting Fairness in Girls' Sports Act, would require a routine physical examination before a student can participate in interscholastic girls' sports, with that exam documenting the student's sex assigned at birth. Verification could involve, depending on the case, reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or naturally occurring testosterone levels. Washington has allowed transgender athletes to compete consistent with their gender identity since 2007, a policy the initiative would functionally end for K-12 competition.

Heywood's public framing has been explicitly about transgender athletes: "To all the young women who stood up and spoke out about biological boys taking your places on your teams and invading your safe spaces: thank you." The initiative's text, notably, applies the examination requirement to every girl who wants to compete, not only to students whose sex has been questioned, meaning the physical-verification step would become a standard part of trying out for a team rather than a case-by-case inquiry.

Washington's timing here isn't accidental to the national landscape. On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. that states may restrict transgender athletes from girls' and women's school sports without violating Title IX, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing for the majority that sports are "generally zero sum" and that including transgender female athletes would "displace or disadvantage a female athlete," Chalkbeat reported at the time. The ruling doesn't force any state's hand. It permits restrictions without mandating them, which is precisely why Washington's version of this fight is happening at the ballot box rather than in court: with the federal legal question settled in favor of allowing bans, whether Washington actually adopts one is now purely a question for Washington voters, not judges.

How Two 400,000-Signature Campaigns Got Here

Both initiatives needed 308,911 valid signatures to qualify, a threshold set by the number of votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election. Let's Go Washington submitted 445,187 signatures for the sports measure and more than 400,000 for the parental rights measure by the group's Jan. 2 filing deadline. The Secretary of State's office verified both through the standard method, a random 3% sample of submitted signatures checked against voter rolls, and found the sports initiative's signatures valid at an 86% rate, KOMO reported. The parental rights initiative was certified separately, on Jan. 26, according to MyNorthwest. Both cleared the March 12 legislative deadline with room to spare.

Let's Go Washington's supporters have pushed back on the idea that the campaign is a narrow conservative project, pointing to the sheer size of the signature totals as evidence of broader appeal; the group claims more than half its signers identify as liberal or independent, though that breakdown comes from the campaign itself rather than an independent survey. Washington currently sits among roughly 20 states, including Oregon, Colorado and most of the Northeast, that allow transgender students to compete consistent with their gender identity, a group that has been shrinking for several years as other legislatures and, this summer, the Supreme Court moved the other direction. Whichever way November goes, Washington's initiative process means the decision is being made directly by whoever shows up to vote, not negotiated in Olympia committee rooms.

Why Olympia Chose Silence Over a Vote

Washington's constitution gives the Legislature three options when a citizen initiative qualifies: pass it into law, reject it outright, or take no action, in which case it goes straight to the next general election ballot unchanged. Jinkins chose to frame inaction as the system working as intended rather than lawmakers ducking a vote, noting that the constitution "anticipates the legislature taking no action" and that more than 20 initiatives to the Legislature over the past 35 years have followed the same path, with over half never getting a hearing at all.

Pedersen was more direct about the political calculation: "They'll be up to the voters to decide." That decision has drawn a legal threat from the Citizen Action Defense Fund, a conservative legal advocacy group, which argues that refusing to hold hearings on a qualified initiative violates the state constitution, a claim that runs directly against the "no action is a valid choice" reading Jinkins offered. Separately, three bills in the current session, SB 5973, HB 2259 and HB 2260, would change how future initiative signature drives work; backers of Let's Go Washington call them "initiative killer bills," while their sponsors describe them as accountability measures. That fight over the rules for future signature drives is happening in parallel with, not instead of, the two initiatives already headed to voters this fall.

The Coalition Lining Up Against Both Measures

Opposition to the sports initiative has organized under WA Families for Freedom, a coalition that includes the ACLU of Washington, Gender Justice League and SEIU 775. Their central argument is not only about transgender students specifically but about what the verification requirement could mean for any girl trying out for a team: the coalition has warned the measure "would make all female students less safe" and could put girls "as young as 11 . . . at risk of unnecessary genital examinations or having to undergo expensive genetic testing" if a coach or official questions their eligibility, according to the Spokesman-Review's reporting on the coalition's statement.

On the parental rights measure, opposition has focused less on a single coalition and more on individual school counselors, LGBTQ+ youth organizations and domestic violence advocates warning that expanded parental access to counseling records could discourage students from disclosing abuse or their gender identity to a trusted adult at school in the first place. Both opposition efforts share a common thread: they argue the initiatives are framed as protecting children in the abstract while creating specific new risks for a smaller, more vulnerable group of them. Both campaigns will now spend the fall making that case directly to voters, on a ballot the Legislature declined to shape.

What November Actually Decides

Both initiatives will appear on the same November ballot alongside a third Let's Go Washington measure repealing Washington's new tax on income over $1 million, meaning the group could see three separate measures decided by voters in a single election rather than fighting each fight through the Legislature. Because these are initiatives to the Legislature rather than direct constitutional amendments, a "yes" vote in November enacts the law directly, with no further legislative step required and no governor's signature needed.

For Kitsap and Puget Sound voters, the practical effect lands closest to home in the school district: a "yes" on 26-638 would change eligibility rules for girls' teams at every public middle and high school in the state, including locally, starting with the first sports season after the law takes effect, while a "yes" on 26-001 would change what a school counselor can and can't withhold from a parent who asks. Both questions go to voters exactly as written by the campaign that gathered the signatures, since neither chamber of the Legislature amended a word before letting the deadline pass.

That's the part of Washington's initiative-to-the-legislature process that both sides of this fight actually agree on, even as they disagree on everything else: whatever voters decide in November becomes law directly, without another vote in Olympia and without a governor's signature standing between the ballot and the statute books. For a state Legislature that spent this session choosing which fights to have and which to hand off, these two are now entirely out of its hands.