Judge upholds decision to keep anti-trans referendum off Maine's ballot this yearhttps://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/06/judge-upholds-decision-to-keep-anti-trans-referendum-off-maines-ballot-this-year/ 🔗Alex Bollinger (12 June 2026)
A state judge in Maine agreed on Thursday that "Protect Girls' Sports," an anti-transgender activist group, tried to get a referendum on sports participation on the ballot this fall but failed to collect enough valid signatures.
Earlier this year, Protect Girls' Sports, a campaign that was bankrolled by out-of-state billionaire Richard Uihlein, submitted 79,692 signatures — well over the 67,682 required to qualify — to get a measure on the ballot this fall that would ban trans kids from participating in school sports.
But Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) ruled in May that, because 12,542 of those signatures were possibly fraudulent, Protect Girls' Sports did not succeed in obtaining enough signatures.
Now, Superior Court Justice Deborah Cashman has affirmed Bellows' decision and rejected the anti-trans campaign's appeals. Cashman's 13-page decision focuses on the technical claims and even notes that there was "substantially more evidence of circulator wrongdoing than what the Secretary ultimately chose to rely on upon making her Revised Determination."
Bellows threw out some of the signatures because the collectors didn't witness the signing (as required by state law). Others were invalidated because the signatures did not match the voters' signatures on voter registries, because the signatories signed more than once, because the signers weren't registered voters, or because the signatures were forgeries. Collectors were paid $3 to $4 per signature.
