Federal judge sides with school against NH parents who protested trans athlete; Trump DOJ disagrees

Free speech bowed to transgender “rights” as a federal judge ruled in favor of a New Hampshire school’s policy banning parents from protesting males in women’s sports.

Three parents filed the lawsuit after the Bow, New Hampshire, school district removed them from a high school soccer game and banned two of them from school property for wearing pink “XX” wristbands. The opposing Plymouth Regional High School team had a male transgender athlete on the girls’ team.

“What the parents were asking for was just temporarily to stop the school from preventing them from going to games and wearing the wristbands,” Daniel Pi, a University of New Hampshire law expert, told WMUR.

New Hampshire banned male transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports in July 2024.  However, since the Plymouth Regional transgender athlete is suing the state over its policy – a matter that has not been resolved yet – a judge granted a preliminary injunction, allowing the athlete to play soccer last fall. The ban remains in effect for everyone else.

After the incident, the school district issued two parents no-trespassing orders. A federal judge ruled this week the parents can attend games at the school but can’t wear the wristbands.

The parents denied they were protesting. In court documents, they called their armbands a “passive statement of support for women’s athletics.”

Pi said, legally speaking, a liberal state could interpret the wristbands as harassment.

“But the parents didn’t wear the wristbands to every game. They just wore it to the game where there was a transgender player, which implies that it was targeted. They were targeting that person,” he said.

After the judge issued the ruling, Bow School Board Chair Martin Osterloh issued a statement praising the judge.

“When our difference in policy leads to harassment of an individual child in a limited public forum such as a sports event, that crosses a line, and I am glad Judge (Steven) McAuliffe agreed,” Osterloh said.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi disagreed with the ruling, siding with the parents.

She said the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice will investigate the matter. 

“I have asked my @CivilRights Division to examine this matter. This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents,” Bondi posted on X. 

The New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association now bans males from competing in girls’ sports, in addition to the state law preventing it. 

The NHIAA officially updated its transgender athlete policy this past February, following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to withhold funding from states, schools and athletic bodies that allow the practice.