High school athletes challenge Trump's order on trans athletes

A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request from two transgender high school athletes in New Hampshire to add the Trump administration to a lawsuit challenging a state law barring trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports after President Trump's issued an executive order doing the same earlier this month.

The teenage plaintiffs, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, filed a challenge last year to a New Hampshire law prohibiting transgender girls in grades fifth through 12th from participating in girls’ sports. The law, which the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed in May and Gov. Chris Sununu (R) signed in July, does not prevent transgender boys from competing in boys’ sports.

A federal judge granted the girls’ request for a preliminary injunction in September, allowing them to continue playing sports according to their gender identity.

“If anything, the plaintiffs’ own circumstances suggest that transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports in New Hampshire has not presented a fairness or safety issue,” Judge Landya McCafferty of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire wrote at the time. “Parker’s soccer team had a winless season last year, and Iris did not make the cut for middle school softball.”

The motion to amend the complaint, filed Wednesday in federal court, adds Trump and members of his administration, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting Education Secretary Denise L. Carter, to the lawsuit.

None of the initial defendants, which include New Hampshire’s education department commissioner and members of the state board of education, opposed expanding the complaint, according to court documents.

The lawsuit is the first to challenge Trump’s order on transgender athletes, which organizations like the NCAA have already begun following. The executive order, which Trump signed Feb. 5, could also complicate the nation’s role as host of the next Olympics because it threatens to withhold visas from transgender female athletes from other countries.

Tirrell and Turmelle’s amended complaint challenges a second Trump order declaring the federal government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, which the lawsuit says facially discriminates against transgender people in violation of equal protection and their rights under Title IX.

In January, the Education Department said it would return to the interpretation of Title IX that Trump’s first administration used. That interpretation does not protect against discrimination based on gender identity, as the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations did.

Earlier this month, the Education Department said it was investigating two schools and a state athletic association that allowed transgender athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports for “apparent Title IX violations.”

On Tuesday, the department asked the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) to strip transgender athletes of records, titles, awards and other recognitions. A trans athlete has never won an NFHS title, the group’s CEO told The Hill on Wednesday.

In a statement on Wednesday, Henry Klementowicz, deputy legal director at the ACLU of New Hampshire, which is representing Tirrell and Turmelle in court, said the plaintiffs are expanding their lawsuit to challenge Trump’s 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.”

Chris Erchull of the organization GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, also representing the plaintiffs, said Trump’s orders “amount to a coordinated campaign to prevent transgender people from functioning in society.”

“The systematic targeting of transgender people across American institutions is chilling, but targeting young people in schools, denying them support and essential opportunities during their most vulnerable years, is especially cruel,” he said.

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