A Colorado mother who said her daughter was secretly socially transitioned at school helped lead a grassroots campaign that delivered major midterm victories, including measures restricting boys from playing in girls’ spots in the traditionally Democratic state.
Erin Lee, executive director and co-founder of Protect Kids Colorado, told Fox News Digital that the campaign’s success was deeply personal, coming more than five years after an experience involving her daughter transformed her from a self-described left-leaning Democrat into a prominent parental rights advocate.
“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.
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In 2023, Lee, her husband and another couple, who at the time had sixth-grade daughters attending Wellington Middle-High School (WMS), sued educators at the Poudre School District with the assistance of America First Policy Institute and Illumine Legal, according to a copy of the lawsuit.
Her group championed three ballot initiatives: Proposition 133, which increases penalties for child sex trafficking to life in prison without parole; Proposition 134, which would generally require students to compete on school sports teams corresponding to their biological sex; and Proposition 135, which would prohibit certain gender-transition surgeries for minors.
Proposition 133 passed with approximately 62% support, while the other two measures, proposition 134, received roughly 52% and proposition 135 also received 52%.
In the same election, Coloradans re-elected Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper in a landslide with 60 percent of the vote.
Lee said that the results demonstrate opposition to certain transgender policies that extend beyond traditional partisan lines.
“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,” she added.
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 claimed opponents spent more than $5 million, outspending her organization by more than 20 to 1.
“This really was a movement of the people,” Lee said.
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She also described the personal toll of her family’s experience, alleging that school officials turned against her and her husband after they questioned their daughter’s change in gender identity.
“We walked through a living nightmare,” Lee said.
“Prior to 2021, I was your typical left-leaning Democrat voting, politically disengaged, virtue-signaling mom,” Lee said.
“And then it happened to us personally, and we were attacked by the school district when my daughter came home and declared she was suddenly a boy. We spoke up to the school and they vilified us. They sent in a well child check to check on our kids and assumed we weren’t fit parents because we didn’t instantly affirm. 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,” she said.
Lee said her daughter one day moved on from the gender confusion, and asked her mom to become an advocate for others who might find themselves in a similar place.
“It took almost a year to get her through this mentality,” Lee said. “It included suicidal ideation and estrangement from people in our lives who didn’t agree with us, not affirming her. She asked us to speak up to help other kids, and that’s what launched me into sharing our story and it going viral, and really becoming this person that people could come to with their own stories of what they were going through, and I just learned how pervasive gender ideology is.”
Her daughter’s request, according to Lee, helped launch the advocacy work that ultimately grew into Protect Kids Colorado’s statewide campaign.
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Lee said she sees the election results as evidence of a broader cultural shift.
“Gender ideology is a house of cards,” she said, arguing that the Colorado vote could inspire similar efforts elsewhere.
“The voters have spoken,” Lee said. “We’ve come a long way culturally for this to have passed.”
A spokesperson for Poudre School District told Fox News Digital in a statement that, “Poudre School District does not comment on individual students, consistent with federal student privacy law.”
The spokesperson added that “the claims in Lee v. Poudre School District R-1 were dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. That dismissal was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in April 2025. The plaintiffs subsequently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review, and the Court denied that petition in October 2025. At no stage of this litigation was the district found liable.”
Fox News Digital reached out to LGBTQ advocacy organization One Colorado for comment, as well as Families Not Politics, an organization opposing the measures.