2 pastors file court challenge to GOP-backed anti-trans ballot referral

Two Arizona pastors and a political action committee are challenging the constitutionality of a GOP-backed ballot referral that would bar trans girls from playing sports and using school bathrooms that correspond to their gender identities.

Revs. Sarah Oglesby-Dunegan and James Deskins filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the measure — House Concurrent Resolution 2003, dubbed the “Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona Act” — in Maricopa County Superior Court. Oglesby-Dunegan is the senior minister at Valley Unitarian Universalist in Chandler, and Deskins is the pastor at Chalice Christian Church in Gilbert. They’re joined as plaintiffs by Will of the People, an Arizona PAC that “was formed for the purpose of opposing ballot measures referred to voters by the Legislature that are contrary to the values of Arizonans or are otherwise deceptive in their content or structure.”

They are asking a county judge to declare the measure unconstitutional and bar it from appearing on the November general election ballot.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including noted government relations attorney James Barton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Spokespersons for Arizona House Republicans and state Rep. Selina Bliss, who sponsored HCR 2003, also did not respond.

According to a bill summary issued by Arizona House of Representatives staff, HCR 2003 would restrict participation in interscholastic or intramural sports to teams that align with a participant’s birth sex. It specifically targets trans girls by barring schools or athletic associations from “opening any interscholastic or intramural athletic team or sport designated for females to athletes of the male sex.”

Though the measure is billed as an effort to protect girls’ sports, proponents have been unable to say with any certainty how many trans girls — if any — are participating in intramural or interscholastic sports at the K-12 levels. There have been no examples in Arizona of trans girls dominating girls’ sports and harming competitive balance. Additionally, federal courts have enjoined the state from enforcing a similar 2022 trans sports ban passed by Republicans and signed by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, though the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to take up an appeal from Republican leaders over that ruling.

HCR 2003 does more than just rehash the anti-trans sports law. It also includes a bathroom ban that Republicans previously couldn’t sneak past the veto pen of Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. Specifically, the measure would bar schools and athletic associations “from authorizing any individual to use a restroom, locker room, shower room or other private space that is not designated for the individual’s sex,” per the bill summary.

If voters approve it, the measure would go into effect on Jan. 1.

The complaint reads: “The nature of the harm suffered by transgender girls from this provision is that great personal disappointment as their ambitions to participate in athletics, for many students a highlight of their time in school, will be effectively quashed.” The complaint also notes that HCR 2003 “provides no limits on the lengths to which a school or association will be expected to go to ‘confirm’ gender as defined within the Act. It merely makes failure to do so unlawful.”

If the measure were to pass and be enforced, the complaint says, trans girls and boys would be put in danger by being forced to change, shower and use the restroom in facilities alongside members of the opposite gender. Studies have shown that trans people face more risk using bathrooms that don’t align with their gender identities than cisgender people face from a trans person — specifically, a trans woman in a woman’s restroom — in similar situations. “The harm here is of personal humiliation and invasion of privacy,” the complaint says.

The complaint also argues that the language of the measure to restrict restroom use to facilities “designated for the individual’s sex” would essentially outlaw the use of single-occupancy restrooms for trans and cisgender people alike. “A single-occupancy facility that is not designated for any sex would literally not be ‘designated for that individual’s sex,” the complaint reads, adding that the measure “provides no exception for single-occupancy.”

Will of the People and the pastors challenging the measure argue that it violates the Arizona Constitution in two specific ways. First, they say, it violates the state constitution’s rule that ballot measure titles must not be misleading. And they argue that the measure runs afoul of the constitutional provision that ballot measures must confine themselves to a single subject.