Nebraska group wants to limit school sports participation by sex in state constitution [View all]

LINCOLN — A conservative-leaning group is starting a signature-gathering effort to let Nebraska voters limit sports participation in public K-12 and college to whether a team is male, female or mixed.

Fairness for Girls, the group, announced its effort Monday to get the measure on this year’s general election ballot “to amend the Nebraska Constitution to establish constitutional protections for sex-seperate athletics to ensure equal access to athletic opportunities for females.” Similar efforts have been used in other states to motivate conservative turnout.

The amendment, if passed, would seek to constitutionally cement a state law requiring that all student-athletes competing in public K-12 or college sports this fall must do so on the team that matches their sex at birth.

Nebraska passed that law last year, State Sen. Kathleen Kauth’s Legislative Bill 89. Kauth’s 2025 law defined “sex” as whether someone “naturally has, had, will or would have, but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports and utilizes” either eggs or sperm for fertilization. The ballot language won’t define “sex” in the state constitution itself, relying on the definition in state law.



https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/03/09/nebraska-group-wants-to-limit-school-sports-participation-by-sex-in-state-constitution/