Washington Voters Said Keep Boys Out of Girls’ Sports. Seattle’s School Board Is Going to Court.

Washington is about as blue as states get. Democrats run the governor’s office, both chambers of the Legislature and most of the big cities. And last week, in that same state, voters passed Initiative 638 by roughly 56% to 44%, keeping biological males off girls’ school sports teams.

Six days later, the Seattle School Board decided that wasn’t the last word.

At a special meeting Monday night, the seven-member board voted unanimously to approve Resolution No. 2026/27-11, which lets the district hire lawyers and take legal action against the new law. The board met behind closed doors first, then came out, held a short discussion and voted 7-0, according to The Seattle Times.

The law takes effect Dec. 3. The board’s own president admits the vote doesn’t change that.

What the board actually voted for

The resolution doesn’t name a lawsuit or a court. It hands the authority to Superintendent Ben Shuldiner, who said he expected to talk with the district’s general counsel and outside lawyers right away. Until then, he said, Seattle schools will keep running under their current policies.

Board member Joe Mizrahi laid out the district’s argument. Washington already has laws on student privacy, discrimination and equal access to education, and he said I-638 didn’t repeal any of them. “Right now, I don’t see how we can implement the requirements of Initiative 638 without violating those other laws and constitutional protections,” he said.

Board President Gina Topp was more candid about the goal. “I don’t think that this stops the clock anyways,” she told KIRO 7, “but I do think looking at some of the legal action that’s possible, hopefully we can maybe gain a little bit more time here.”

That’s the whole play in one sentence. Voters set a date. The board wants a delay.

The resolution itself goes further than legal housekeeping. The board had already gone on record against the initiative back in September, before anyone voted. Mizrahi framed Monday’s move as protecting “the privacy and dignity of our students.” This isn’t a neutral board asking a judge for directions. It’s a board that lost at the ballot box and is trying again in court.

A parent who said it to their faces

Amy Sousa, who campaigned for the initiative, was in the room. When the vote was over and the meeting was ending, she stood up and spoke.

“It’s very frustrating,” Sousa told KIRO afterward. “We fought really hard to stand up for fairness for our girls.” The Seattle Times reported that one person could be heard shouting “King County does not get to veto” as the microphones cut out.

That line lands because of the math. Seattle and King County lean far to the left of the rest of the state, but a statewide initiative is a statewide decision. Voters across Washington, not just in one county, decided this question.

The mayor and the union pile on

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson weighed in the next day.

The school board also isn’t alone. The same night it voted, the ACLU of Washington, Legal Voice and Pacifica Law Group filed a separate lawsuit in King County Superior Court against the state, on behalf of the Washington Education Association teachers union, the nonprofit TransFamilies and several anonymous Seattle parents, according to The Seattle Times.

Their main target is the law’s verification rule. Under I-638, a student who wants to play on a girls’ team needs a health exam from her own doctor confirming her biological sex, based on reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup or naturally produced testosterone levels, as KOMO described it. The suit calls that an invasion of privacy under the state constitution and argues it treats girls unequally because boys don’t face the same check. It asks a judge to block the law before Dec. 3.

Supporters say the answer is simple. A sports physical is already routine, and the whole point of a girls’ team is that it’s for girls.

The other side has a lawyer too

Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian legal group that has defended these laws across the country, says Seattle is picking a fight it will lose. ADF senior counsel Matt Sharp pointed out on Seattle Red that 27 states already have laws like this, and that Washington and Colorado are now adding them by popular vote.

“These laws simply say that males, no matter how they identify, are not eligible for a female team,” Sharp said, according to Seattle Red. He argued the Supreme Court rejected the same equal-protection arguments this year in the Idaho and West Virginia cases.

Sharp also had a point about money. Seattle Public Schools is broke by its own description. Shuldiner called the district “structurally insolvent” in June as it faced an $87 million deficit. Sharp said a court fight could run “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars” in lawyers and experts.

ADF says it hopes Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, will defend the law as his job requires, but it’s also looking for a way to step into the case itself so the voters’ side isn’t left in the hands of an office that didn’t want the measure.

Dec. 3 is still the date

For now, nothing about the law has changed. The Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association, which runs high school sports, said it is still following current state law and will update its handbook and forms to match the new law when it takes effect, according to KOMO and FOX 13 Seattle.

So girls across Washington, from Spokane to Vancouver, are headed toward a new set of rules in a little over three weeks. Seattle’s school board can hire all the lawyers it wants. Unless a judge steps in, the vote stands.