Transgender teenagers are using the New Hampshire courts to target President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting biological males from participating in female sports.
Last year, transgender students Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle filed a lawsuit against the state over a New Hampshire law that “requires schools to designate athletics by sex and prohibits biological males from participating in female athletics” and bars transgender athletes in grades five through 12 from participating in girls sports.
On Wednesday, civil rights groups GLAD and the ACLU of New Hampshire filed a motion to expand the lawsuit in response to two recent executive orders from Trump, in which he implemented a federal position on transgender participation in female athletics similar to New Hampshire’s law.
“We’re expanding our lawsuit to challenge President Trump’s executive orders because, like the state law, it excludes, singles out, and discriminates against transgender students and insinuates that they are not deserving of the same educational opportunities as all other students,” Henry Klementowicz, ACLU of NH deputy legal director, said in a press release. “Every child in New Hampshire and across the country has a right to equal opportunities at school and all students do better when they have access to resources that improve their mental, emotional, and physical health.”
Court documents filed Wednesday specifically cited Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, and parts of a Jan. 20 executive order that critics argued violated the Constitution and infringed on Title IX, which prohibits discrimination in the education system on the basis of sex.
Both of the students named in the lawsuit have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and now identify as transgender females. Tirrell, a 10th grader, and Turmelle, a ninth grader, are receiving puberty-blocking medication and hormone therapy “to alleviate the distress of physical characteristics that conflict with their gender identity,” according to court documents filed last year.
Tensions over Tirrell’s participation on a girls soccer team boiled over last fall when a group of parents protested that her inclusion on the team was unfair to biological female competitors. Some female players on an opposing team refused to play against Tirrell, who was allowed to continue playing on the team with the Bow School District as her lawsuit played out in the courts.
A group of parents sued the school district after officials ordered them to stop standing outside a soccer game and wearing pink wristbands with a “XX” on them to represent the genetic chromosomal pattern for biological females. School officials issued protesters no-trespass orders on school property after saying the parents “violated the prohibition against discrimination and harassment.”
The parents argued their constitutional right to free speech was violated, saying they were “silently supporting our daughters and their right to fair competition” and accusing school officials of responding “with threats and bans that have a direct impact on our lives and our children’s lives” instead of fostering “open dialogue.”
Proponents of Trump’s recent executive orders under legal challenge in New Hampshire have pointed to Title IX as support for their case that transgender women should not participate in female athletics. Twelve-time NCAA All-American former champion swimmer Riley Gaines and others have contended that allowing biological males to play in female sports gives them an unfair advantage against biological females.
“From now on, women’s sports will be only for WOMEN,” Trump said as he signed his executive order called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” last Wednesday.
"From now on, women's sports will be only for WOMEN." –President Donald J. Trump
pic.twitter.com/2Vix6jlhJe
— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) February 6, 2025
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The following day, the NCAA announced that it would change its rules to ban biological males from female sports to comply with the president’s new rule.
A slew of legal challenges have been filed against several other executive orders targeting additional transgender policies. The president’s ban on people enlisting or serving openly in the military while expressing “a false ‘gender identity’ divergent” from biological sex, as well as actions to cut off federal funding to hospitals providing so-called gender-affirming care to children, have been under attack in the courts.
