Initiative 638 passed in 35 of 39 Washington counties last week — by over ten percentage points statewide. Pierce County went 60-40. Clark County matched it. Even the border county that rejected it did so by just 116 votes out of roughly 114,000 cast.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson responded by backing a legal effort to kill it before the December 3 certification date.

The Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors voted on November 10 to authorize legal action against I-638, which requires sex verification documentation for female school sports. Wilson endorsed the move the same day, praising the city's "commitment to creating inclusive learning environments" and touting what she called Seattle's "sewer socialist mentality" — her words, not ours.

The initiative didn't sneak through on a technicality. It outperformed the companion parents' rights measure by 65,000 votes. Only four counties rejected it — King County, two coastal counties, and one on the Canadian border. The rest of the state spoke clearly. The mayor's position is that King County should have veto power over all of them.

The Washington ACLU filed suit on November 3, before the votes were even fully counted, on behalf of plaintiffs aged 11 to 17. Their argument: I-638 creates an "intrusive sex-verification regime" that imposes financial and logistical burdens on girls. The documentation in question is a checkbox on a routine physical — the same physical every athlete already needs to compete. As Let's Go Washington Executive Director Darren Littell put it: "If asking a doctor to check an additional box requires oversight, we've lost the plot."

Littell didn't stop there. "Girls' leagues should never have become the all-purpose leagues," he said, a reference to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association's nearly two-decade-old policy of allowing athletes to compete based on gender identity rather than biological sex.

The WIAA policy is the status quo Wilson and the school board are fighting to preserve. It's the same policy that was in place on December 5, 2025, when female wrestler Kallie Keeler was allegedly assaulted during a match against a biological male in the Puyallup School District. That incident became one of the driving forces behind I-638's ballot campaign.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously this year that state-level sex-based sports restrictions are constitutional. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that such policies "do not require an overhaul of women's and girls' sports." Washington's own Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, acknowledged through his office that the initiative "is defended regardless of our personal views" — a notable admission from an AG whose political allies are the ones suing to block it.

Matt Calkins, who spent 11 years as a sports columnist at the Seattle Times before leaving for Outkick this summer, has covered Washington state athletics longer than most. His departure from legacy media to cover stories like this one is its own data point about which outlets are willing to report what voters actually think versus what institutional Seattle wishes they thought.

Women's sports advocate Amy Sousa framed it the way most of the state sees it: "King County doesn't get a veto!"

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley noted the irony of progressive jurisdictions racing to court to overturn ballot measures they couldn't defeat at the polls — the same jurisdictions that spent four years warning about threats to democratic norms.

The Washington Supreme Court has overridden voter-approved measures before. In 2015, they declared charter schools unconstitutional after voters approved them. The legal infrastructure to nullify ballot results exists in Washington. It's been used. The coalition lining up against I-638 — the ACLU, the Washington Education Association, the nonprofit TransFamilies, Legal Voice, and now the Seattle city government — knows exactly which courthouse doors to knock on in King County Superior Court.

Thirty-five counties said yes. The certification date is December 3. The lawsuit was filed before the ballots were counted.