Daniel Villarreal’s October 5 explainer at LGBTQ Nation counts eight LGBTQ-related measures in six states this November. GLAAD’s reporter fact sheet, dated October 8, names the same map: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia, Washington. Five of those states have measures GLAAD describes as targeting health, safety, and well-being of LGBTQ people, youth, and families. Virginia is the outlier. It is the only pro-LGBTQ measure GLAAD lists for 2026: a vote to remove a dormant same-sex marriage ban.
That is a constitution question sitting next to a Pride Center calendar. We already have a campus polling and absentee walkthrough and a NCAA-era athlete policy page. This week is the sheet that will actually sit in an envelope. Lambda’s 20-state model-bill ask is a press strategy. These six states are a ballot.
If you live in none of them, you still have classmates who do. Absentee deadlines are local. The handbook in your RA binder is not.
Six states, eight lines
Villarreal’s split is the cleanest inventory. Four sports bans: Colorado, Arizona, Nebraska, Washington. Two measures on gender-affirming care for transgender youth: Colorado and Missouri. Washington also has a measure that, in his wording, could out LGBTQ+ kids to parents who may not be safe. Virginia’s line is the marriage ban removal.
GLAAD and Villarreal disagree slightly on packaging (eight measures vs. “five states” of hostile text plus Virginia). They agree on the states. Use the state name on your sample ballot, not the roundup headline. Colorado is two numbers, not one vibe.
Education Week on October 7 puts the sports cluster in K-12 language: Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington will vote on gender identity and school athletics. College students still live in those states. High school eligibility rules follow siblings, club teams, and the jobs some of you take as assistant coaches. A constitution is slower to unwind than a campus PDF.
Do not flatten this into “trans sports.” Arizona’s expansion, in EdWeek’s account, is not only girls’ teams. Nebraska’s text would write sex designations into the constitution. Colorado’s 134, in GLAAD’s sheet, is about who gets to write eligibility at all. Those are different machines.
If your campus voter table only has a federal candidate card, it missed the state side. Ballot measures do not campaign in the quad unless someone prints them.
Colorado is two statutes
GLAAD’s Colorado block is the one with numbers. Proposition 134, as GLAAD describes it, would strip local schools, athletic associations, and parents of authority to set sports eligibility policies and replace that with a government-mandated blanket ban. GLAAD says it would subject all girls to invasive, government-run genital inspections, with no appeals process, including when a girl is only “suspected” of being transgender. GLAAD also notes that the Colorado High School Activities Association already built eligibility standards over time with athletes, families, and administrators.
That last sentence is the campus-adjacent fact. CHSAA is a body that had a process. 134 is a vote to take the process away. If you are a Colorado student who played, officiated, or had a younger sibling in CHSAA, you already know the paperwork. The ballot is asking whether that paperwork still belongs to the association.
Proposition 135, in the same GLAAD sheet, would ban transgender youth and their families from making health-care decisions with their doctors. GLAAD’s phrasing: it prevents care even when families, patients, and medical professionals agree. This page is not going to tell you what care to seek. It is going to tell you that Colorado filed a second number, and that number is not 134. People will share one graphic that says “Colorado.” Open the pamphlet. There are two.
Villarreal puts Colorado in both the sports list and the care list. That is why a Colorado absentee ballot is longer than a slogan. If you only vote the sports line because that is what the group chat argued about, you left 135 blank or accidental.
Arizona and Nebraska already have statutes
EdWeek’s useful correction: Arizona and Nebraska already prohibit transgender girls from joining girls’ athletic teams. A ballot measure in a state that already has a statute is doing something else.
In Arizona, EdWeek says this year’s measure would expand the ban to transgender boys seeking to play on boys’ teams, and to non-school athletic leagues such as Little League. That is not “the high school rule again.” Little League is not your registrar. Students who coach rec teams, or who have kids in those leagues, are in the expansion. So is anyone who thought the existing law was the ceiling.
Nebraska’s measure, per EdWeek, would enshrine the existing ban in the state constitution and require school sports to be designated male, female, or co-ed. A statute can be amended by a later legislature. A constitution is a different climb. If you are a Nebraska student who already lives under the statute, the ballot is asking whether to lock it higher.
Shelby Chestnut and Sarah Kate Ellis, writing in The Advocate on October 5, describe the Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington sports votes as asking voters to enshrine exclusion of transgender students in state constitutions. They also warn that bans open the door to anatomy exams and other gender inspections on women and girls who want to play. That is their opinion piece. GLAAD’s Colorado 134 writeup makes a similar inspection claim as a fact about that measure. Attribute both. Do not invent enforcement stories from a dorm hypothetical.
Chestnut and Ellis also call the five-state cluster a testing ground for 2028. Treat that as their strategic read, not as a campus to-do. Your to-do is the envelope with your name on it.
Washington is not only sports
Villarreal lists Washington in the sports-ban four and separately flags a measure that could out LGBTQ+ kids to parents who may not be supportive. GLAAD’s sheet is organized with a Washington heading; the extract we got did not spell the parental-notification text as clearly as Colorado’s 134/135. If you are a Washington student, do not stop at the sports graphic. Read every LGBTQ-coded line on the state pamphlet. Outing language in K-12 is a different harm model than a sports roster rule. It follows people into housing and financial aid when a parent is the emergency contact.
Campus staff already know the chosen-name field is not a parent portal. A state measure that forces disclosure in schools is not your registrar’s FERPA training. If Washington’s pamphlet uses “parental rights” as the header, read the operative sentence, not the header.
GLAAD says if these measures pass they would also affect other vulnerable youth and non-LGBTQ women, girls, and families. That is GLAAD’s impact claim. The inspection language is how they connect a trans sports ban to every girl on a roster. You can believe or dispute the politics. You still have to read the text if you vote there.
Virginia is the marriage amendment
GLAAD: Virginia has the only pro-LGBTQ ballot measure up in 2026. It seeks to remove the Commonwealth’s dormant ban on marriage equality. Twenty-four states, GLAAD says, still have dormant bans that have been unenforceable since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision.
Dormant means it is sitting in the state constitution while federal case law makes it unenforceable. Removing it is cleanup. Leaving it is a tripwire if federal protection moves. This page is not a prediction about the Supreme Court. It is a note that Virginia students have a marriage line on the same November ballot as everyone else’s governor and Congress races, and that GLAAD counted 23 other states that did not put their dormant text up this year.
If you are a Virginia student who is already married, or who might want to be, the campus clerk will not annotate this for you. Sample ballots will. So will the official explanation pamphlet, which will be dryer than any Pride Month panel.
Missouri, in Chestnut and Ellis’s Advocate piece, is an all-or-nothing constitutional amendment that would enshrine a ban on health care for transgender young people along with abortion restrictions. Villarreal lists Missouri among the two care measures. We are not going to unpack abortion law here. We are going to say Missouri is not a sports-only story, and a combined amendment is how you get people to vote one thing when they came for another. Read the full text. Combined amendments are a drafting choice.
What a campus actually does
Print the six state names at the voter table. Not a rainbow. The names.
If you are registered in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia, or Washington, check the absentee or early-vote deadline this week, not the week of the football game. The polling access piece covers IDs and campus locations. This article covers why your state packet may be longer than your roommate’s.
If you are an RA, do not put “vote your values” on the whiteboard and stop. Put the secretary of state’s sample-ballot URL. Values are a slogan. The measure number is the work.
If you run a Pride Center, History Month programming does not replace a ballot workshop in these six states. Lambda can ask for model bills in 20 capitals. Your students from Lincoln and Tempe have a Tuesday in November.
Athletes: the NCAA policy page is association rules. These measures are state constitutions and K-12/rec expansions. Do not assume your college handbook wins. Constitutions outrank handbooks. EdWeek’s Little League line is the reminder that the fight is not only varsity.
International students: you may not vote. You can still tell a roommate from Phoenix that Arizona’s measure, as EdWeek describes it, is an expansion past the law they already know. That is a conversation, not a lecture.
Staff: if your institution is in one of these states, the general counsel already has a memo. Ask whether student affairs is repeating the memo or repeating Instagram. The Title IX federal stack is a different pile. We wrote that when the 2020 rule returned to the Register. Do not mix OCR with a state constitution question.
If you share one screenshot, share GLAAD’s state list dated October 8, then open your own pamphlet. Roundups compress. Colorado has 134 and 135. Washington has more than sports. Virginia is the marriage line. Missouri is bundled. Arizona and Nebraska are not writing on a blank page.
The vote is in November, and the envelope with the pamphlet is a this-month job if you vote absentee.
