Brunswick runner joins debate over fairness in girls' sports, ballot push

A Brunswick runner’s second-place finish in a girls’ race has moved from the track to the ballot box, with 19-year-old Rohen Brown preparing to speak about fairness in girls’ sports alongside Rep. Laurel Libby.

Brown is now a freshman on the University of Southern Maine women’s track and field and cross country team. USM lists her as being from Auburn and a graduate of Saint Dominic Academy, where she ran varsity cross country and track, earned Second Team All-Region honors from the Sun Journal in 2023, served as National Honor Society vice president, and made the Honor Roll from 2020 through 2024 and the Principal’s List from 2021 through 2024. The university also lists her as a political science major.

The debate Brown is stepping into has already shaken Maine politics. The Maine Principals’ Association adopted its Gender Identity Participation Policy in May 2024, after Maine amended the Maine Human Rights Act in 2021 to add gender identity as a protected status in education. In February 2025, the Maine House censured Libby by a 75-70 vote over a Facebook post that identified and criticized a transgender student-athlete in girls’ sports. The U.S. Supreme Court later ordered the House to restore her voting rights.

The dispute widened further when the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in 2025 that Maine’s policy violated Title IX. That federal challenge deepened the rift between state leaders and Washington and pushed the issue even farther into the public eye.

Now the fight is headed to the ballot. Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine says it has gathered more than 82,000 petition signatures. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows released draft ballot wording on April 7, the public comment period runs through May 7, and the Legislature adjourned on April 14 without voting on the initiated measure. Maine voters are scheduled to decide it on Nov. 3.

If approved, the proposal would require public schools to designate athletic teams as male, female or coeducational and base participation on the sex listed on a student’s original birth certificate. It would also require separate restrooms, locker rooms, shower rooms and other private spaces for each sex, a change that would reach well beyond athletics and directly affect school life for Sagadahoc County families and voters.