As we covered last week, ballot initiatives involving trans athletes did well on election night despite the success of Democrats at the polls. In fact, such initiatives even passed in two blue states that went blue across the board.

Voters in left-leaning Washington state and Colorado have approved measures designed to ban transgender athletes from participating in school-sanctioned sports.

Measure 638 in Washington, which had more than 56% of the vote, will prevent students who were assigned male at birth from participating in sports designated for female athletes. The measure also requires athletes wanting to play in female sports to produce a statement from a health care provider verifying their gender.

Proposition 134 in Colorado will require educational institutions and athletic associations to assign sports as male, female or coed. The proposal, which was supported by 52% of voters, will also limit athletes to playing in sports in the gender they were assigned at birth.

The votes came in states where Democratic-led governors' offices and legislatures have declined to enact the kind of bans that have become the norm in Republican-led states.

The fact that these initiatives passed by a clear majority of voters really ought to matter to elected officials but it clearly does not. In King County, Washington, which includes the city of Seattle, the school board held a special closed-door session to discuss it in private. The head of the school board spelled out the "reasoning" for fighting the voters in court.

Speaking before the vote during a special meeting to discuss the issue, school board director Joe Mizrahi laid out his concerns with the initiative: Washington has existing laws to protect student privacy and discrimination, and to guarantee equal protection and access to opportunities in education.

“And Initiative 638 did not repeal any of those laws, so all those laws still exist,” he said. “And right now, I don’t see how we can implement the requirements of Initiative 638 without violating those other laws and constitutional protections."

“Our responsibility is to ask the courts to help us understand how to meet our legal obligations, especially as the privacy and dignity of our students are at stake,” he added.

Before taking the vote, the board entered into a closed session to discuss the matter. The seven-member board then passed the resolution unanimously after brief discussion in open session, to a smattering of applause.

Here they are getting this done.

Also Monday, a group of teachers and parents filed a lawsuit against measure 638. It's not clear if the superintendent of Seattle schools will join this lawsuit or launch his own, but the reasoning sounds familiar.

A coalition of Washington educators and parents filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the implementation of a new state law prohibiting transgender girls from playing in girls school sports.

The group alleges that Initiative 638 is “discriminatory,” and plaintiffs include the Washington Education Association and the nonprofit organization TransFamilies, which offers support to families with gender-diverse and transgender kids...

Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court and allege that the law is unconstitutional. They allege in part that it “significantly intrudes” on the privacy rights of girl student athletes by requiring a sex verification, which would not be required for boy student athletes.

So what actually happened here is that progressives shoved boys into girls locker rooms and onto girls sports teams. This isn't considered an intrusion on the privacy rights of the girls by the school district or the ACLU.

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However, when voters pass an initiative saying that only girls can be on the team and they'll need to certify they are biological girls as part of the normal physical required to participate in any sport, suddenly the school district and the ACLU claim the girls privacy rights are being intruded on.

So, boys in the girls locker room is not an intrusion. 

Doctors checking a box on a form after an already required physical is an intrusion.

What are the odds that some progressive judge in Washington decides this makes perfect sense?

Something similar is already happening in Colorado where a similar ban on trans athletes passed. The newly elected Democrat governor says they'll have to look carefully at that result.

Gov.-elect Phil Weiser and leading Democrats in the Colorado legislature are already discussing how to tweak four conservative ballot measures that appear to have been approved by voters this year, including ones banning transgender youth from gendered school and college sports and preventing kids from getting surgery altering their biological sex characteristics...

On Wednesday, speaking to reporters after he won the governor’s race, Weiser doubled down. 

“We’re going to have to take a look at these anti-trans measures and what adjustments are necessary and appropriate,” he said. 

Weiser said, for example, that he doesn’t think it’s acceptable to make every child and young adult playing on gendered sports teams (Proposition 134 applies to athletics for college students as well as youth) get checked for their biological sex. 

Here's the thing, Phil. Every child was already checked for their biological sex at birth and that didn't change since then. So all you need is a look at the original birth certificate and you have your answer.

All of this is politics, pure and simple. Progressives lost at the ballot box so now they're trying to fix it in the courts or in the legislature. It has only been a week and they are already giving the middle finger to the same voters that just handed them the blue wave. Why vote at all in blue states if the votes don't matter?