Maine Is ‘Too Progressive’ to Allow Men in Women’s Sports, Girl Dad Leader Says as He Fights to Keep Initiative on the Ballot

Maine fathers are standing up for their daughters, challenging the secretary of state’s decision to invalidate their ballot initiative that aims to protect women’s sports from men claiming to be transgender.

“Maine is far too progressive to continue allowing sexist, regressive, and illegal sex-based discrimination in our schools, and the daily violation of the civil rights of our state’s most vulnerable population: its children,” Leyland Streiff, leader of Maine Girl Dads, told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

“Yet shockingly, we have watched this violation of sex-based civil rights happen every day in Maine’s schools,” he added. “Just this past April, young female schoolchildren (and their mothers, coaches, and advocates) testified to the State Judiciary Committee in Augusta about voyeurism, masturbation, violence, and mental trauma from males in female bathrooms and locker rooms.”

He also noted that a male athlete won a state women’s pole vault competition last year.

Streiff’s group acquired more than enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot. The initiative would prevent boy students from competing on girls’ teams and protect girls locker rooms and bathrooms from boys, even if they claim to identify as transgender.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced in March that her office found the initiative, formally titled “An Act to Designate School Sports Participation and Facilities by Sex,” valid, with 71,033 signatures—far more than the 67,682 signatures required.

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Yet Streiff noted that the Maine Women’s Lobby and EqualityMaine opposed his effort. He said the groups recruited three citizens to file a legal challenge against the effort. He claimed the legal challenge is headed by the Elias Law Group, the firm of Democrat lawyer Marc Elias.

“We believe democracy should be protected and exercised, and this referendum should be debated by Mainers at the ballot box—not by a bunch of out-of-state lawyers,” Streiff said.

The Daily Signal reached out to the Women’s Lobby, EqualityMaine, and Elias Law Group for comment, and none of them responded by publication time. The Daily Signal asked them who is funding the efforts against the initiative.

A coalition of groups led by EqualityMaine, GLAD Law, and the Maine Women’s Lobby condemned the initiative in February as an “attack on public education.” The coalition condemned the campaign’s financial backing, referring to an $800,000 contribution from conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein.

Last month, Bellows announced that, after reviewing the signatures again, the ballot initiative fell short. Her office found 67,150 signatures valid, slightly more than 500 below the threshold.

Bellows’ office, when reached for comment, referred the Daily Signal to the May press release finding the signatures insufficient.

“We have appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and remain very confident in the challenges we’ve raised to the Secretary of State’s reasoning and decisioning,” the Maine Girl Dads leader said. “Oral arguments have been scheduled for July 1st, and we anticipate a ruling by mid-July. A successful appeal will keep us on the November 2026 ballot.”

Streiff described his position as “progressive” and the transgender activist position as regressive.

“Everyone has a sex, sex is not gender, and there is no right or wrong way to be a male or female (dress, feel, present, even identify however you want—we believe that’s fantastic),” he told the Daily Signal. “Sex is big enough for everyone, and does not require anyone to conform to regressive stereotypes.”

He also noted that Maine Girl Dads is “nonpartisan by design, as our daughters’ rights shouldn’t be a political ploy or a party-line issue.”

The Maine Girl Dads say their position is “purely paternal, never political, and based on common sense.” Streiff said the group has “tons of Democrats and independents alongside Republicans in our midst.”

“The elected bureaucrats in Augusta have taken radical positions that are simply at odds with the beliefs of those who voted them in,” he argued. “The truth is the majority of Mainers—of all walks of life and political persuasions—believe in sex-designated sports and spaces in schools. To them, to us, and to our daughters, this is not a political stance but a commonsense approach to fairness, dignity, and the protection of long-held federal civil rights.”

“We dads are simply doing what dads do—showing our kids that we’re willing to do the right thing, especially when it’s hard, because our example will shape them and shape their world,” Streiff concluded.