A Nevada judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to derail a proposed ballot initiative backed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo that would govern eligibility rules for transgender athletes in school sports. Carson City District Judge Jason Woodbury allowed the initiative to move forward, but he ordered specific changes to the ballot language that supporters would use during signature gathering.
The judge’s ruling largely rejected the claims in the case brought by Sue Burtch, the head of the Nevada chapter of the National Organization for Women. Burtch’s lawsuit challenged the initiative’s “description of effect,” a required 200-word summary of what supporters say the proposal would do.
In the courtroom dispute, Woodbury agreed that the “description of effect” needed revision. He said the wording must explicitly communicate that the initiative would carve out an exception to Nevada’s constitutional equal-rights guarantee regardless of gender identity, according to the reasoning set out in his order. Previously, the description had noted that the proposal would amend a part of the Nevada Constitution that restricts discrimination based on gender and other characteristics that voters approved in 2022.
Woodbury also required another wording change related to how the initiative would apply to state-supported school sports. In the hearing last week, he questioned a discrepancy between language in the ballot question and the description of effect: the ballot question said “recipients of State funds” while the description of effect said “programs that receive public funds.” In his revised description of effect, Woodbury replaced “public funds” with “State funds,” writing that the change was needed to correct “this slight discrepancy and avoid any misunderstanding by potential signers.”
The case stemmed from the initiative petition and its description of effect, which the lawsuit said was insufficient because it did not include context about an equal-rights exception and did not adequately describe scope and effects. The Associated Press story said Woodbury agreed with the argument about the missing equal-rights exception context, but did not agree with the lawsuit’s other arguments.
Those other challenges also included broader arguments about whether ballot initiatives can require a government entity to take specific actions. The judge rejected an argument offered by Bradley Schrager, a lawyer challenging the proposal who typically represents Democratic-backed causes, that Woodbury should apply a Nevada Supreme Court ruling limiting ballot measures that try to override legislative authority to other government entities as well. Woodbury wrote that extending that reasoning would “virtually abrogate Nevada’s initiative power,” according to the account.
Supporters must collect enough signatures for the measure to appear on the November ballot. Under Nevada law, the petition needs at least 37,197 signatures from each of the state’s four congressional districts by June 24, the story said. The campaign said no signatures had been collected yet, and it said challenges to the description of effect could invalidate already-collected signatures.
Woodbury’s ruling typically sets up an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, the AP report said. Under Nevada law, the required description of effect language complying with the court order generally cannot be challenged in later lower-court cases, though the ongoing case itself can still be appealed.
The Nevada sports-governing organization does not track the number of transgender athletes in the state, and the story said it does not have a figure for how many transgender student athletes might be affected by the initiative. The AP report said the organization overseeing school sports in Nevada changed its policy last year to limit participation to a student’s assigned birth sex, and that the NCAA has adopted a similar approach.
In a statement Wednesday, a Lombardo campaign spokesperson, Halee Dobbins, said the governor is “proud to lead the effort to give voters a direct voice on the issue,” and said he is confident voters will choose to protect “the safety, competition, and integrity of girls’ sports.”
Related prior coverage in Nevada said the lawsuit aimed to block the sports measure before it reached the signature stage.