Press Herald - The median statewide home sale price reached a new record of $436,000 in June, according to data released Thursday by the Maine Association of Realtors. Hannah LaClaire breaks down the data and shares three big takeaways regarding the current housing market.
New - Senate poll - Maine
Collins 48%
Jackson 47
Polling Numbers
Press Herald - A ballot question limiting transgender students’ rights in sports and access to school facilities will not appear on the November ballot, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday
The citizens’ initiative, filed by a group called Protect
Girls Sports, initially qualified for the ballot but later met a legal
challenge over the signature collection process, which a group of citizens said
broke several state rules and resulted in invalid signatures.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows agreed and rejected nearly
4,000 signatures, leaving the group 500 names below the required threshold. A
Superior Court judge upheld that call last month, but the group appealed.
Protect Girls Sports argued to the Supreme Judicial Court on
July 1 that the secretary of state’s rules for out-of-state signature
collectors were unlawful, and that she did not have the right to invalidate
more than 1,000 signatures on that basis.
The high court, in a unanimous per curiam decision Friday,
said Bellows had not only the right but the obligation to invalidate those
signatures.
“As a result of the Secretary’s proper invalidation of the
signatures collected by these four circulators, the petition fell below the
constitutional threshold for an initiative petition to be submitted to the
voters of Maine,” the court wrote. “The Secretary thus correctly determined the
petition to be invalid.”
The referendum would have required participation in school
sports and use of facilities including bathrooms and locker rooms to be based
on a student’s sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity.
Although the question will not appear on the November
ballot, the petitioners are allowed to keep collecting names; per the state’s
constitution, their initial signatures only remain valid for a year after the
petition was filed with the secretary’s office. In this case, that occurred on
Nov. 3, 2025.