Thursday, July 07, 2016

Anti-transgender bill in Washington State fails to make the Nov ballot

Washington state just proved that transphobia has its limits.

From The Stranger:

Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group that wanted to make the state vote on trans people's civil rights, did not get enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. David Ammons, communications director for the Secretary of State, confirmed that Just Want Privacy has canceled their scheduled 9 a.m. signature delivery appointment tomorrow. Trans rights activists won in Washington State. They did it. Fear and hatred won't win, not this time.

And from MyNorthwest.com

 According to the secretary of state’s office, Campaign Chief Joseph Backholm informed the office that the campaign did not gather enough signatures.There is a 246,000 minimum for signatures — the state recommends getting 325,000 to account for duplicate and invalid signatures. I-1515 failed to get the minimum. At around noon Thursday, the Just Want Privacy Campaign posted a call for help to gather more signatures, and did not yet mention its failure to gather enough.

In March, ThinkProgress labeled the initiative "The Most Radical Anti-Trans Ballot Initiative Ever Submitted In Washington State."  It would have:

  • Declared “null and void and of no effect” the Human Rights Commission’s rules guaranteeing bathroom access for transgender people.
  • Banned the Human Rights Commission from ever adopting rules related to gender identity in sex-segregated facilities.
  • Clarified that the state’s nondiscrimination laws still allow restrooms and locker rooms to be designated “for the exclusive use by biological male persons only or biological female persons only” and that no others (i.e. transgender people) are guaranteed such access.
  • Preempted municipalities from passing their own bathroom protections for transgender people.
  • Prohibited transgender students from accessing sex-segregated bathrooms in schools, only allowing them to access to “single-stall bathrooms, uni-sex bathrooms, or controlled use of faculty bathrooms, locker rooms, or shower rooms.”.
  • Allowed students to sue schools for $2,500 “for each instance in which they encountered a person of the opposite sex while accessing a public school student restroom, locker room, or shower room designated for use by the aggrieved students’ sex,” as well as monetary damages “from the offending public school for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered.”


Just Want Privacy was allegedly helped by national anti-lgbt groups  such as the Family Research Council and yet still failed to get enough signatures.

How sweet it is!!

3 comments:

John said...

The people behind I-1515 are the same ones who tried to overturn the state's legislatively passed marriage law in 2012. They failed at that, too.

JoeBuddha said...

Because we have a slightly lower douche percentage here. They're out there, but more marginalized.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Serves them right. What motivates these busybodies? Do they really believe the "OMG loophole for bad guys!" narrative they sell? Or is this just a calculated attempt to stick it to trans people?