The Capital Judicial Center in Augusta in November 2020. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

Attorneys for the group behind a citizen’s initiative related to transgender students argued Wednesday before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that the referendum should be approved for the November ballot.

The ballot initiative, filed by a group called Protect Girls Sports, seeks to require participation in school sports and use of sex-separated facilities to be based on sex assigned at birth, rather than gender identity.

The referendum initially qualified for the ballot in March, but a group of individuals sued, arguing that many of the signatures were improperly collected. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows reversed course and invalidated nearly 4,000 signatures after an agency review, leaving the petitioners 500 signatures short of what they needed to get on the ballot.

A Superior Court judge upheld that decision last month, and Protect Girls Sports immediately appealed to the state supreme court. The high court must issue a decision by Aug. 25 for the referendum to make it on the November ballot.

The issues with the signatures are related to the behavior of out-of-state circulators — the group employed about 120 people from outside Maine to collect names — who the secretary of state’s office found had left their signature sheets unattended, submitted improper signatures and, in four cases, failed to consent to Maine’s jurisdiction, which involved checking a box on a form.

Wednesday’s oral arguments focused on whether Bellows had the right to invalidate those signatures by relying on a 2020 consent order that establishes the terms for out-of-state signature collectors. The order, which was approved by a federal court, requires those nonresidents to consent to being investigated or prosecuted for any violations of Maine law.

Gerald Butler collects signatures for a petition to protect girls sports on Nov. 4, 2025 in the lobby outside Hammond Lumber Auditorium, Augusta’s polling place at the Augusta Civic Center. (Joe Phelan/Staff photographer)<?xml version="1.0"?> Purchase this image

Timothy Woodcock, an attorney for Protect Girls Sports, told the justices that the order itself violated the state Constitution, and therefore the secretary did not have the power to enforce it, or even enter into that agreement in the first place.

Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill pressed Woodcock on what Bellows was supposed to do, since she is bound by that decree. Other justices had sharp questions about that argument, as well.

Justice Catherine Connors asked Woodcock if, under the First Amendment, a state is allowed to create a consent to jurisdiction order. She said four separate appellate courts have found that they can.

Woodcock said it would depend on the consent agreement. He argued Bellows has an obligation to uphold the state Constitution and preserve the rights of Maine residents to support a petition.

“If this is upheld … an initiative has been pulled off the ballot with 1,520 otherwise valid signatures on the strength of federal court order,” Woodcock said in closing. “That would be a remarkable result under these circumstances.”

John Bolton, an assistant attorney general representing the secretary of state, pushed back against the idea that the consent order was any effort by the secretary to expand authority.

Justices asked Bolton questions about the timing of the certification process, related to one situation outlined in filings.

One of the nonresident circulators, who failed to check the box submitting to Maine’s authority, later filed a corrected form, weeks after the signatures had been submitted. Bolton argued letting petitioners have the chance to fix their mistakes after the deadline is a problematic slippery slope.

“I think it might lead to a lot of gamesmanship,” he said. “Especially if you imagine a situation of a circulator who knows, maybe, that they did something wrong, and is very concerned about that. We’re going to have a very hard time even getting them to consent to the jurisdiction.”

An attorney for the original petitioners, the group of three Cumberland County residents who initially sued over the referendum, also made arguments, and said Bellows was right to invalidate the signatures. They described the referendum supporters’ arguments in their appeal as “half-baked” in a filing.

Bolton said the secretary of state office’s deadline to finalize the November ballot is Aug. 25. The chief justice said the court would issue a written decision well before that date.