Colorado voters approved two ballot measures this month restricting boys from competing in girls’ school sports and barring certain gender-transition surgeries for minors, a campaign driven in large part by a mother who says her daughter was secretly socially transitioned at school without her knowledge.
Erin Lee, executive director and co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, told Fox News Digital the win was personal. “I co-founded Protect Kids Colorado because, five-and-a-half years ago, my 12-year-old daughter was secretly transitioned in her sixth-grade classroom,” Lee said.
Proposition 134, requiring students to compete on teams matching their biological sex, passed with about 52% support. Proposition 135, prohibiting certain gender-transition surgeries for minors, also passed with roughly 52%. A third measure, Proposition 133, increasing penalties for child sex trafficking to life without parole, passed with about 62%.
The results came in the same election where Coloradans re-elected Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper by a landslide, with 60% of the vote — a split Lee says proves her cause isn’t a partisan one.
“Colorado broke ranks where they voted for Democrats,” Lee said. “They also voted yes on these commonsense child protection measures. I think that really speaks volumes to the fact that gender ideology is not a winning issue.”
The lawsuit behind the activism
In 2023, Lee, her husband, and another couple with a sixth-grade daughter at Wellington Middle-High School sued educators in the Poudre School District, assisted by the America First Policy Institute and Illumine Legal. The case was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, a dismissal upheld by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2025. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October 2025.
A Poudre School District spokesperson told Fox News Digital the district does not comment on individual students under federal privacy law, and noted that “at no stage of this litigation was the district found liable.”
A mother’s account
Lee said she was once a disengaged, left-leaning Democrat before her daughter came home and announced she was suddenly a boy. She said the school responded by sending a welfare check to the family and questioning the couple’s fitness as parents when they didn’t immediately affirm the change.
“We spoke up to the school and they vilified us. … We were bullied with the suicide myth, ‘Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter? You have to medicalize your child,’ and we’re one of a few success stories,” Lee said.
Lee said it took nearly a year, including a period of suicidal ideation and estrangement from people who wouldn’t affirm her daughter, before her daughter moved past the gender confusion and asked her mother to speak out to help other families facing the same situation. That request, Lee said, is what launched her into advocacy.
How the measures passed
Lee said the campaign relied on more than 3,300 petition circulators, over 1,900 notaries, and support from more than 1,000 churches. She said opponents spent more than $5 million, outspending Protect Kids Colorado by more than 20 to 1.
“This really was a movement of the people,” Lee said. “Gender ideology is a house of cards. The voters have spoken. We’ve come a long way culturally for this to have passed.”
Fox News Digital reached out to LGBTQ advocacy group One Colorado and to Families Not Politics, which opposed the measures, for comment.
