A longer version of this article appeared in the Washington State Standard.
The conservative political group that has been trying to bolster parental rights in Washington schools will try again.
Let’s Go Washington on Monday announced it will begin gathering signatures for two new initiatives to the state Legislature. One, focused on parental rights, comes after a heated debate on the topic during this year’s legislative session in Olympia. Another looks to block transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports.
The group, led by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, will now need to collect 308,911 signatures by Jan. 2 to get the measures before lawmakers. Sponsors are advised to submit at least 386,000 signatures to allow room for error if some are ruled invalid.
Last year, legislators approved Let’s Go Washington’s Initiative 2081, which set new requirements for the information schools had to provide to parents. This year, Democratic lawmakers pushed through an overhaul of this “parental bill of rights,” upsetting supporters of the original measure.
The new law, House Bill 1296, took effect immediately upon Gov. Bob Ferguson’s signature in May.
The law removed parental access to student medical records. It also codified certain student rights and added new parental rights, including for parents to be notified of unexcused absences.
The new Let’s Go Washington initiative, IL26-001, would repeal the changes House Bill 1296 made to the group’s earlier initiative.
“We don’t co-parent with the government,” Heywood said in a statement. “No government employee can care about or love your child like you do.”
Let’s Go Washington’s second new initiative, IL26-638, would block transgender students from competing in girls’ sports.
President Donald Trump has made this one of his top social issues. In March, the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the Tumwater School District over allowing a transgender athlete from an opposing team to compete in a girls’ high school basketball game.
Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to districts that allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports. Local school officials have said they’re in a bind: Either comply with state law and jeopardize federal funding, or follow Trump and risk punishment from the state.
If an initiative receives the required signatures, lawmakers have a few options. They can pass it as proposed, making it law. They can reject it, sending the measure to the ballot for voters to weigh in on at the next general election, which would be November 2026. Or they could pass an alternative to the proposed initiative, which would put both the original and revised versions on the ballot.
As written, both initiatives would face a steep uphill battle to win approval from the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which reconvenes in January for a 60-day session.
A coalition opposed to the initiatives has already launched a campaign against them, dubbed Washington Families for Freedom.
The group said in a statement on Monday that the initiatives would violate students’ privacy, including with “forced invasive medical exams,” increase bullying and decrease access to counseling, and undo a “successful sports inclusion policy that has worked since 2007.”
In 2024, Let’s Go Washington gathered enough signatures to send six initiatives to the Legislature. Lawmakers approved three, including Initiative 2081, and sent three others to voters, who turned them down. The group also supported Initiative 2066 focused on slowing the state’s shift away from natural gas, which voters passed but is now tied up in court.
As with that previous slate, Let’s Go Washington expects to spend millions of dollars on this campaign.
The Washington State Standard published a longer version of this story on Sept. 8, 2025. Cascade PBS has edited this story for length.
