NH: Suing For The Right To Harass Teenagers

New Hampshire is getting a lesson in the real cost of trying to crack down on trans teens. 

Like many other states, New Hampshire has seen many attempts to "protect" girls' sports from trans students. One attempt in 2021 to pass a legislative ban on trans athletes was shot down along party lines.

But in 2024, HB 1205 was passed, "maintaining integrity and balance" in sports by banning transgender girls from playing sports. That law was supposed to take effect this fall, but first the families of two transgender teens sued the state. 

One of the girls asked for a speedy ruling from the federal judge hearing the suit so that she could start soccer practice with her team. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty granted the request with just hours to spare. 

So Parker Tirrell, a sophomore, started the soccer season. 

“Playing soccer with my teammates is where I feel the most free and happy. We’re there for each other, win or lose,” she said in a statement. “Not being allowed to play on my team with the other girls would disconnect me from so many of my friends and make school so much harder.”

As that might suggest, Tirrell has long been accepted as a girl at her school. In fact, she has played on the team in previous seasons. So no problems here, right?

Of course not.  

Tirrell plays for Plymouth Regional High School. When parents of an opposing team from Bow High School caught wind that their daughter would be facing a trans player, they complained to the athletic director. He told them that the court decision tied his hands. So Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote chose another path. According to court documents, they bought some pink wristbands (not the tiny "cause" ones you're thinking of) and Foote wrote "XX" on each. Their daughters asked their teammates if they'd all like to wear the wristbands , but not everyone wanted to, so the team did not participate in this "silent protest." Foote posted on Facebook the night before that he would be attending the September 17 game against Plymouth to show "solidarity."

According to the parents' account, nobody wore the wristbands in the first half, though some other spectators asked for some as well. At halftime, Foote went out to the parking lot to put a Riley Gaines photo on his Jeep's windshield. Fellers already had a "Protect Women's Sports for Female Athletes" poster on his car. Then he and Fellers put on the wristbands for the second half.

School officials and a police officer told the parents to take the wristbands off. There were words. The First Amendment was thrown about. Fellers got thrown out. When others refused, a match official stopped the game and said that Bow would forfeit if they weren't removed. Two fathers were given no trespassing orders and barred from the school grounds, one for a brief period and the other for the fall term. Did the fathers take this moment to cool down and reconsider their actions?

Of course not.

They sued. They filed a federal lawsuit against the Bow School District, the superintendent, the principal, the athletic director, the policeman at the game, and the referee. Fellers and Foote each had some words:

“Parents don’t shed their First Amendment rights at the entrance to a school’s soccer field. We wore pink wristbands to silently support our daughters and their right to fair competition. Instead of fostering open dialogue, school officials responded with threats and bans that have a direct impact on our lives and our children’s lives,” commented Kyle Fellers. “And this fight isn’t just about sports—it’s about protecting our fundamental right to free speech.”

“The idea that I would be censored and threatened with removal from a public event for standing by my convictions is not just a personal affront—it is an infringement on the very rights I swore to defend,” explained Andy Foote. “I spent 31 years in the United States Army, including three combat tours, and the school district in the town I was born in—the one my family has seven generations of history in—took away those rights. I sometimes wonder if I should have been here, fighting for our rights, rather than overseas.”

I will readily admit that transgender athletes raise some issues, and that reasonable people can disagree.

But.

When you're setting out to publicly harass and embarrass a young human teenager, you have lost the plot. When you are arguing that the First Amendment protects your right to make a 15 year old human child feel unwelcome and unsafe, you have lost any right to sympathy.

The lawsuit has been brought by the Institute for Free Speech, a law firm that is based not in New Hampshire, but in DC. They were founded in 2005 as the Center for Competitive Politics. They have ties to the State Policy Network and the Council for National Policy as well as Koch, Uhlein, and Bradley piles of money. Their previous claim to fame is going to court to help establish SuperPACs as a thing. 

Plymouth is a town of under 7,000 people right in the middle of the state. Nathaniel Hawthorne dies there. How did they get connected to a big time DC firm?

Who knows. But the protesters aren't done. Though Foote and Fellers can't attend, the September 24 game drew a host of folks wearing the pink wristbands, including this fine group--

Jeremy Kauffman, an activist withe Free State Project, the storied attempt to engineer New Hampshire's takeover by Libertarians

Rachel Goldsmith, an activist with the FSP who also headed up the Moms for Liberty chapter that put a $500 bounty on any teacher caught violating the "divisive concepts" law

Terese Bastarache, an anti-vaxxer running for public office

Jodi Underwood, another free stater who tried to cut her school district's budget in half

None of these folks live in the Bow and Dunbarton School District. And despite their Libertarian streak, they seem to feel that some folks should not be able to live free. But that hasn't stopped a storm from being unleashed on the district, as captured by Sruthi Gopalakrishnan for the Concord Monitor and NHPR:

Alex Zerba stood before a crowded school board meeting in Bow on Monday night, scanning the seated crowd of unfamiliar faces around her in the Bow High School auditorium.

“We don't want you supporting our girls the way you are,” said Zerba, a parent of a girls varsity soccer player. “You are not a parent of any of these girls on the soccer team. We are asking you to stop your protesting. It is hurting our girls.”

But plenty of actual local residents also demonstrated that they don't get it, like Steve Herbert:

“I'm disappointed in every one of you,” said Herbert looking at the school board members. “You just silenced somebody who had a different opinion. There was nothing wrong. There was no voices, there was no mean words. It wasn't directed at anybody.”

Of course it was directed at somebody. As the superintendent pointed out, the pink bands were not intended to support women in sports, but to protest a specific player, to tell a young human being that she was not welcome, that she was not okay. 

This is the inevitable end of trans panic sports bans-- either a young athlete is attacked, her identity questioned, and her family forced to endure some kind of genital or dna check because the parent of a defeated opponent demands proof. I have never been entirely clear on what the purpose of trans sports bans is supposed to be-- convince young humans not to be trans because they won't be able to play sports? To drive young trans athletes underground? But the actual effect of these bans is quite clear; they result in the harassment and mistreatment of young human beings. 

Yes, I recognize there are many viewpoints and that this is a relatively new issue that we are collectively struggling to deal with. But if you cannot start from the foundational understanding that trans human beings are, in fact, actual real human beings, then you are not going to arrive at any place good.