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Democratic leaders in the Washington state Legislature said Friday they have no plans to hold hearings on two initiatives focused on parental rights of students in public schools and banning transgender athletes from playing girls’ sports.
Both Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, and House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, staked out this position in remarks to reporters. It creates a high likelihood that both of the initiatives will go before Washington voters on midterm ballots this November.
“I’m certain that we will not be passing either of those initiatives,” Pedersen said. “They’ll be up to the voters to decide.”
The political committee Let’s Go Washington said it turned in more than 400,000 signatures for each of the two initiatives last week. Brian Heywood, the hedge fund manager who leads the group, urged lawmakers to reconsider holding hearings.
“Not only would this be a blatant slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of Democrat, Independent, and Republican voters who support the measures, it would be a clear sign that they don’t care about the abuses to children, families, and female athletes taking place in the state,” Heywood said in a statement.
Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, said he hasn’t read the initiatives but “it’d be the first time I ever supported a Bill Heywood initiative,” making an apparent flub of Heywood’s first name.
“If what you’re hearing is the Legislature saying it should go to the voters for a vote, I tend in general, as a general matter, I don’t have a problem,” he told reporters Friday.
The vows from legislative Democrats don’t come as a surprise.
The parental rights measure would immediately undo a new state law Democrats fought to pass last year. That law rewrote a Let’s Go Washington initiative known as the parental “bill of rights” that lawmakers passed in 2024.
IL26-001 would repeal the changes made to the 2024 initiative by House Bill 1296, one of the most controversial bills passed in the 2025 legislative session. Democrats said the rewrite was necessary to clarify the earlier Heywood-backed initiative, which sought to codify rights for parents of public school students under age 18.
The goal of the 2024 initiative was to ensure parents have easy access to school materials, their child’s medical records and immediate notification if a child is involved in a crime. One of the major changes in last year’s legislation removed parental access to medical records.
IL26-638 looks to block transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.
Even though Ferguson said he wasn’t an expert on the initiatives, he said, “We live in a world right now where trans kids are going through a lot.”
“I want to support trans kids,” he said.
Ferguson also had a brief but tense exchange with former Q13 Fox reporter and podcast host Brandi Kruse, who asked about his position on the initiative, given his daughter competes in school sports. The governor responded by suggesting Kruse has an “obsession with trans kids.”
Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, said he was surprised Democrats won’t hear the initiatives.
“I thought that was disrespectful,” he said. “We can have honest disagreements about the policy. But I raised three daughters, they were actively involved in sports. This absolutely is a legitimate conversation on fairness and safety.”
Both measures appear to have enough signatures to move forward to the Legislature, then to voters in November. But the secretary of state’s office still needs to certify the initiatives before they can be considered. That’ll likely take several weeks.
Lawmakers technically have three options with the citizen initiatives. They can approve them and make them law, though that won’t happen in this case. They can send them to the ballot for voters to decide, the presumed outcome here. Or they could pass an alternative to an initiative, leaving it up for voters to weigh in on both.
The 60-day legislative session begins Monday.
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com.
The initiative to keep girls’ sports female does not attempt “to block transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.” It aims instead to prevent boys from competing in girls’ leagues as required by federal law, specifically Title IX. Language is everything here, and your deliberate reinterpretation of the initiative’s language reveals a bias on the part of My Edmonds News. This is not a “trans rights” issue, it’s a women’s rights issue.
Amen, Jess!
My Edmonds News is a strong local publication and community resource, making many important contributions. That said, it does lean left IMO in many of its editorial decisions. For instance, it carries the Washington State Standard, a left-leaning publication, and regularly features opinion pieces from environmental advocates, who often hold views on the left, even if it tries to purport otherwise. There are often promotions or publications for anti-Trump or anti-ICE events (ICE being a law enforcement agency), which are seen as part of a broader defund-the-police agenda. MEN has been very open-minded in their willingness to present different sides of an issue with the reader comments, and they deserve commendation for it. Washington state leans blue, and the Puget Sound region has mostly a one-party, left-of-center political environment. MEN, of course, has to “read the room” for financial survival in a challenging environment. It’s ironic that traditional women’s rights advocates seem willing to overlook this upcoming Initiative to keep up with the current political correctness trends. Again, My Edmonds News is a fantastic community resource that deserves support, while keeping in mind the limitations of the community’s awareness in which the publication needs to operate. This is a classic example of a glass that’s more than half full, and with it comes well-deserved gratitude.
If the state Democrats really cared about voter’s rights they would never havepassed the bill last year that gutted the previous voter approved parental rights initiative. Now we, the voters, have to do it again. Banning genetical boys from participating in girls sports is about fairness and safety to girls. It should be a no brainer but brainless politicians don’t care about that. They choose to ignore basic science and the safety and fairness of female athletes be damned.
The language bias displayed here is telling. It changes a news item to an editorial piece. Biological males shouldn’t be in girls sports or other same-sex activities with few exceptions, in my opinion. This is not a radical or hateful position to hold.
Do better My Edmonds News. Use neutral words and terms in all your reporting. You report. Let us decide.
This is a story from the Washington State Standard, which shares its contents with news organizations. Feel free to provide feedback to the editor, Bill Lucia, via info@washingtonstatestandard.com. –Teresa
Thank you
Could I get a roll call from everyone discussing “biological boys” in these comments who has had significant personal contact with a trans person. Not seeing one on the street, but someone like a close friend or family member. If you haven’t had this experience, you are not qualified to speak on this topic and should write a retraction letter
Rob, I have had “significant personal contact” with women and girls and they’re clear they don’t want males in their single-sex spaces. Not in sports leagues, not in prisons, not in their locker rooms. That’s enough for me, and it should be for you, if you care about women’s rights. Your efforts to silence us, won’t.
As so often happens, the primary people involved don’t have the financial resources to be heard.
That’s a call for non-profit news media to give them a voice.
What is life like for the people that don’t fit the binary definition?
What is life like not only for those people, but their friends and families? What have the doctors and psychologists involved learned?
I look forward to this series 🙂
By the legislature passing the buck to voters, as is their option, the well-funded advertising campaign against these initiatives will likely be full of lies as was the last campaign against the LGW initiatives. It was obvious advertising lies which caused some of them to not pass. (Is this part of the Democrat legislative leaderships’ strategy to prevent the initiatives from becoming law in November?) Thus the word clarifications in these comments above are important and factual critiques of this article.
This is a no brainer! I really can’t believe we are still discussing this subject. Biological boys/men should not be on the same teams that the girls/women play on. Every time you give a biological male a place on a female team that takes away the spot a female athlete could have to participate. If transgender males can’t compete with other male athletes then maybe they can choose a different sport or hobby where they can compete. Female athletes don’t want them in their locker rooms or take the chances of getting hurt by someone twice their size. You are taking so much away from females who deserve scholarships and sporting careers.