AUGUSTA, ME – For nearly five years, the Maine Human Rights Act has included “gender identity” as a protected class, allowing men who identify as women legal protection to enter female spaces and sports. This policy puts Maine in conflict with the Trump administration’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order. While the federal government’s legal proceedings are ongoing after the Trump administration sued the state over its alleged Title IX violations, the Maine legislature doubled down in July by rejecting a bill that would have protected women’s spaces and sports.

In response, the Maine Girl Dads coalition formed to protect women’s sports and spaces. Independent Women’s Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, interviewed three fathers representing the Maine Girl Dads, highlighting their stories and their mission to change existing law in the state, in a new profile released today. This comes after IW Features has exposed the ongoing threats to women’s privacy, safety, and equal opportunity in Maine, from fairness in competitive skiing to the censorship of Rep. Laurel Libby.

In 2023, Riley Gaines, host of OutKick’s Gaines for Girls podcast, posed the question: “Where are the dads?”

After hearing that question, Maine dad Leyland Streiff was inspired to take action and started the Maine Girl Dads petition, a non-political coalition of fathers coming together for one mission: to ensure their daughters have a future with female-only sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Fathers in Maine have had enough. Streiff told IW Features:

“We’re making the kids themselves that are victims of this issue stand up and be the ones to speak, and that’s really terrible. As parents, we shouldn’t be doing that.”

[Pictured: Maine Girl Dads hold a rally outside Maine’s capitol in early 2025; Photo credit: Leyland Streiff]

Maine Girl Dads’ mission is to protect young women in the state by ensuring they have the right to fair play, equal protection under the law, and safe single-sex places. As Streiff explained, current Maine law fails girls and women. As one Maine Girl Dad told IW Features:

“My feeling is most dads … see themselves as protectors and providers. One of their main responsibilities is to protect their families, and in this case, their daughters.” 

Now, Maine Girl Dads hopes to put the issue directly before voters with a ballot initiative that would recognize sex-based definitions for athletic categories and private spaces such as locker rooms or bathrooms. Maine Girl Dads needs to collect 70,000 signatures prior to the February 2, 2026 deadline in order to put the measure on the November 2026 ballot. 

The Maine Girl Dads have the momentum, which is spreading throughout the country. On Saturday, Riley Gaines will attend a Maine Girl Dads rally to help garner support for the petition and gather signatures. Two years ago, she had inspired fathers, like the Maine Girl Dads, to stand up in defense of their daughters, and now, a new mother to a baby girl, Gaines will join these united fathers fighting for their own daughters.

IW Features will continue to spotlight female athletes, like those in Maine, who will continue to lose out on opportunities to men if sex-based definitions are not codified into law.

“A true partnership between men and women is what provides for harmony in society, which is why the efforts of the Maine Girl Dads to stand up for the girls and women of Maine deserve a spotlight,” said Andrea Mew, IW Features managing editor. “As modern women, we’re often sold narratives that our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, and male friends or colleagues are our adversaries, and that toxic masculinity or the patriarchy will hold us back. But strong women need strong men to support us—and this is especially important in the fight to protect girls’ and women’s spaces. We need passionately loyal male allies like the Maine Girl Dads to serve as role models for a healthy partnership between the sexes, because even small sparks can build and emerge as a bright, glowing flame.”

Read the full Maine Girl Dads story: These Dads Are Standing Up for Girls’ Sports 

Direct media inquiries and booking requests to [email protected]. 

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