When Virginia’s Board of Health voted 15 to 0 last year to write a rule limiting transgender participation in girls’ sports and restricting bathroom and locker room use by biological sex, the move was meant to cement outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2022 executive order before he left office. According to an opinion piece published in American Thinker by James Stansbury, that unanimous decision has now been undone by his successor, and the way it came undone is drawing scrutiny from critics of the new administration.
Stansbury writes that newly elected Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced the reversal of the Board of Health ruling during her appearance at Virginia PrideFest in Richmond on Saturday, September 12, 2026. In her remarks, Spanberger framed the moment in emotional terms, telling the crowd, per a Fairfax Republican Newsletter cited in the piece, that she “burst into tears because of the fact that I want to make members of the LGBTQ+ community know that you have a governor that values your community.” The declaration drew cheers at the event, Stansbury notes.
What went unmentioned from the stage, according to the op-ed, is the timing. Stansbury points to the state rulemaking docket, which he says shows the effort to implement the rule was formally withdrawn back in July 2026—months before the governor’s announcement. There was, by his account, no press release, no public hearing, and no vote at the time of withdrawal. Just a single line buried on a regulatory docket that sat unnoticed until it became a line at PrideFest.
A Pattern the Op-Ed Says Parents Should Notice
The American Thinker piece doesn’t stop at the procedural question. It pairs the reversal with two local incidents that Stansbury argues illustrate what he calls the Law of Unintended Consequences—the idea that well-meaning policy can produce disastrous outcomes.
The first comes from Fairfax County, where Stansbury says Fairfax Co. News 7 reported that a boy was observed watching girls change in the girls’ locker room at West Springfield High School. When a girl complained, the piece says, a teacher told her there was nothing that could be done. Stansbury describes this as the kind of scenario that is becoming commonplace and predicts it will continue under the Spanberger administration.
The second example he characterizes as more menacing. Per Arlington Co. News 7, also cited in the piece, a 58-year-old man described as a known sex offender gained access to a girls’ locker room at the Washington Liberty High School pool and allegedly exposed himself to women and children. According to the op-ed, the man told those present that he was transgender and that pool policy allowed him to use the girls’ locker room.
Stansbury acknowledges that neither political party is immune to unintended consequences, but argues that Democrats in recent years “seem to have excelled” at producing them. His conclusion is aimed squarely at concerned parents, whom he urges to weigh these incidents when they cast ballots in the upcoming November election.
The Senate Race and a Warning About Ads
The op-ed also turns its attention to Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both of whom Stansbury says have indicated they would vote to block any bill preventing biological males from participating in women’s sports. He frames their positions as part of a broader Democratic alignment on the issue.
This year, Warner is the only one of the two up for re-election. His challenger, Bert Mizusawa, is described in the piece as a retired U.S. Army major general, a former senior executive in the federal government, and a nationally respected figure in law, national security, and public service. Stansbury calls Mizusawa the only choice capable of offsetting Warner’s Senate influence, which he says will keep fueling what he terms the “waning transgender fad” in Virginia and across the country—along with what he sees as its consequences for females of all ages.
The piece closes with a practical complaint: Stansbury writes that he has seen zero political ads for Mizusawa, even though early voting in Virginia has already begun. He directs readers to the candidate’s webpage and urges them not to sit the election out.
Where the Argument Leaves Voters
It’s worth being clear about what this piece is and isn’t. It is a commentary—an argument advanced by a writer with a clear point of view, published on a site whose tagline invites readers to support its work so its “ideas” stay heard. The factual anchors it relies on—the 15-0 Board of Health vote, the July 2026 docket withdrawal, the PrideFest remarks, the two local locker room incidents reported by Fairfax and Arlington outlets—are presented as the foundation for a political case rather than as neutral reporting.
The procedural criticism at the heart of the piece is straightforward: a rule that passed unanimously and generated a formal rulemaking process was, in Stansbury’s telling, quietly shelved months before the governor dramatized its reversal before a friendly crowd. Whether that sequence reflects deliberate concealment or routine administrative bookkeeping is a matter the piece leaves for readers to judge—though Stansbury’s framing makes his own view plain.
The incidents he cites are harder to reduce to a single policy question. Schools and public facilities across the country have spent years wrestling with how to balance access and privacy, and the cases described here—a complaint dismissed by a teacher, an alleged exposure by a registered offender who invoked pool policy—speak to enforcement gaps as much as to rulemaking. Stansbury treats them as evidence of where the state is headed; critics of his argument would likely note that anecdotes, however troubling, don’t by themselves establish a trend.
What the op-ed does make clear is that the transgender bathroom and sports debate is not fading in Virginia—it is being reframed as an election issue, tied directly to the Senate race and to the governor’s first year in office. With early voting underway and November approaching, Stansbury’s closing plea is less an argument than a turnout message: pay attention, he writes, and don’t skip this one.
For voters in the Old Dominion, the choice the piece presents is between two readings of the same set of events—one that sees a governor keeping a promise to a community she says has been marginalized, and one that sees a quiet regulatory retreat with real-world costs. Which reading prevails is now up to the electorate.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/the-dems-trash-the-old-dominion/