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A social conservative group seeking to place an anti-transgender initiative on the 2016 California ballot announced Monday it failed to collect enough signatures by the deadline to make it happen.

The initiative, dubbed the “Personal Privacy Protection Act,” sought to prohibit transgender people from using restrooms in government buildings consistent with their gender identity and would have allowed businesses to do the same.

The anti-trans coalition, known as Privacy for All, needed to submit 365,880 signatures by Monday to qualify the measure for the ballot. Nowhere in the organization’s statement does it say how many signatures it did collect.

The coalition is supported by the Sacramento-based Pacific Justice Institute and other groups in California that passed Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage in the state.

“There is a strong desire to keep bathrooms sex separate among a segment of California voters,” said Gina Gleason, a spokesperson for Privacy For All. “But much of California is still being introduced to the issue.”

Kris Hayashi, executive director of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, said the failure of the anti-transgender initiative represents a victory for fairness in California.

“This initiative was a poorly veiled attack on transgender people that sought to undermine that freedom and single out for harassment anyone who doesn’t meet stereotypes of what it looks like to be male or female,” Hayashi said. “Today Californians have made clear these types of discriminatory attacks on transgender people and our families, communities, and neighborhoods have no place in our state.”

In 2013, the same group collected approximately 620,000 signatures in an effort to rescind a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown spelling out anti-transgender discrimination is prohibited in schools. But California officials rejected 131,857 of the submitted names, leaving the anti-transgender group short of the 504,760 signatures needed to qualify the referendum for the ballot.

According to Privacy for All, litigation is proceeding through the courts challenging this rejection and referendum proponents have won their first round in court.

“We are disappointed that this measure will not be on the 2016 ballot, but our efforts to protect privacy in bathrooms, locker rooms and showers will continue,” Gleason said. “The legal action to count all ballot signatures submitted in 2013 continues, we expect to see lawsuits by those who have had their privacy violated, and we assume that a measure like the Personal Privacy Protection Act will qualify for the ballot in the future.”

Had enough signatures been submitted for the 2016 deadline, transgender advocates feared another battle at the statewide level in California similar to the recent fight in Houston over an LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance that failed at the ballot. During the campaign in Houston, anti-trans forces ran ads stoking fears about transgender people using the public restroom consistent with their gender identity.

Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, said he doesn’t think the fight against anti-transgender forces is over.

“We know from our research that many people don’t really even know what ‘transgender’ means,” Zbur said. “While our opponents failed to gather enough support this time, we know they will be back. Through our public education campaign, we will educate the public about transgender people, the challenges they face and the contributions they make.”

To improve transgender awareness and understanding in preparation for future attacks, Equality California and the Transgender Law Center are leading a separate statewide public education campaign to combat widespread public misunderstanding about transgender and gender nonconforming people.

According to the organizations, the effort is separate from any work on political or legislative campaign and seeks to create understanding and acceptance of transgender people through research and education.