Ignorance is Bliss: Republican picks on trans kids with ballot measure

Find someone who loves you as much as Arizona Republicans love picking on transgender children for political gain.

In 2022, the GOP-led state legislature passed and then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed a bill barring trans girls from participating in youth sports. The law, known as the Save Women’s Sports Act, was immediately challenged and eventually struck down by a federal court, a decision that was subsequently upheld by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Despite the setbacks, state Republicans have not given up the fight to screw with the lives of a few vulnerable kids.

Last year, two Republican leaders — Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen — asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. (That request is still pending.) In the meantime, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has repeatedly vetoed anti-trans bills sent to her desk by GOP lawmakers.

Ahead of the 2026 legislative session, one Republican is renewing the anti-trans campaign. On Thursday, Prescott state Rep. Selina Bliss prefiled a ballot measure that would ask Arizona voters to designate school sports as either male, female or co-ed and to ban transgender girls from using school locker rooms and showers that align with their gender identities. If passed by the legislature, the measure would bypass Hobbs’ desk and veto pen and go straight to voters in 2026.

The measure suffers from a few apparent flaws. 

One is that it’s almost a carbon copy of the 2022 law the courts have already blocked. Bliss’s bill does little to update the current law — which remains on the books but is enjoined from being enforced — other than to update when it’d take effect, change “students” to “athletes,” and place restrictions on who can use locker rooms and showers. It also states that student athletes must compete on teams based on the sex listed on the athlete’s original birth certificate. Even if voters passed it, it’s unclear why it would suffer a different fate than the Save Women’s Sports Act.

The other issue is that the bill purports to solve a problem that practically doesn’t exist.

In a press release, Bliss said that “as someone who competed in athletics and as a mother who watched her daughter compete, I understand the value of a fair field of play,” adding that “Arizona should encourage every child to participate, and we should give girls the chance to compete without losing opportunities to athletes with inherent physical advantages.” But Bliss’ release did not say how many trans girls are currently playing youth sports or if her daughter ever actually competed against one.

Bliss did not respond to questions from Phoenix New Times along those lines. In fact, there’s little evidence at all that girls’ sports in Arizona are awash with trans athletes, much less athletes physically dominating biologically female competition.

Doug Nick, a spokesperson for Horne and the Arizona Department of Education, said the department doesn’t “track any statistics for that,” Horne’s frequent advocacy to bar trans girls from girls’ sports. The Arizona Interscholastic Association, which oversees school sports participation in the state, doesn’t have information on that, either. 

“This is an issue that does not come to the association,” AIA Seth Polanksy told New Times.

‘Absurd and obscene’

Education and LGBTQ advocates who spoke to New Times were mystified at what Bliss is trying to accomplish.

Jeremy Helfgot, a Phoenix LGBTQ advocate, said it was “absurd and obscene” for Bliss to introduce a ballot measure that is essentially already blocked by the courts.

“The matter of law is settled,” Helfgot said, “and there is absolutely no reason to try to do this again, other than to harm already vulnerable kids.”

And how many such kids are there? No one pushing for a trans sports ban seems to be able to say.

The lawsuit that struck down the law was brought by two prepubescent transgender athletes, though it’s not clear if they’re still playing sports or how many more trans girls like them are currently participating in youth sports.

Helfgot called it “attempting to make a mountain range out of a pebble,” adding that Arizona Republicans are “constantly fronting solutions in search of problems, not because there’s anything to solve, but because it throws fuel on the fire of discrimination against people they simply don’t like.” 

Tyler Kowch, the spokesperson for the education advocacy group Save Our Schools, said Bliss is “legislating around a problem that doesn’t really even exist.” 

“They always talk about things that have happened in other states,” Kowch said. “They never talk about something that happened in Arizona that they’re specifically trying to solve.”

Anti-trans measures are dead on arrival when they have to go through Hobbs, but it’s possible Arizona voters would favor Bliss’ measure. President Donald Trump won the 2024 election in part because he played on culture war fears about trans people, flooding the airwaves with explicitly transphobic ads. Testing the political winds, even Democrats like Sen. Ruben Gallego got in on the trans sports handwringing.

Kowch worries that if Bliss’ measure makes the ballot, it’d result in a “really unfortunate campaign” that would “include a lot of really hateful messaging.”

“Regardless of whether it passed,” Kowch added. “Just having it on the ballot would do real damage to students across the state.”

Kowch doesn’t believe the Arizona electorate would be so easily baited, though.

“It’s unfair to block anyone from playing sports with their friends,” he said. “That’s not something that any Arizona voters want.”