Two transgender high school students have challenged President Trump’s executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports, according to documents filed Wednesday in federal court.
The students and their families previously challenged a New Hampshire law enacted last summer that bars transgender girls in grades 5 through 12 from participating in girls’ sports. The students, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, initially sued their respective school districts and state education officials in August. Their attorneys filed the amended complaint Wednesday, adding Trump and members of his administration as defendants in that lawsuit.
“The Trump Administration’s executive 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,” Chris Erchull, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “School sports are an important part of education — something no child should be denied simply because of who they are. Our clients Parker and Iris simply want to go to school, learn, and play on teams with their peers.”
Trump’s executive order, signed Feb. 5, directs the Education Department to inform schools they will be violating Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools, if they allow transgender athletes to compete in girls’ or women’s sports. The law states that schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
The executive action was part of a string of orders signed in the early weeks of Trump’s second administration that have targeted transgender service members and gender transition care, and rolled back government recognition of transgender individuals.
The complaint filed Wednesday expands the plaintiffs’ suit from August, challenging the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s executive orders on transgender athletes and another that said it would be “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and define them based on the reproduction cells “at conception.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys said those directives subject Tirrell and Turmelle to “discrimination in violation of federal equal protection guarantees and their rights under Title IX.” They also argue the executive orders unlawfully subject their schools to the threat of lost federal funding for allowing them to play on girls’ teams.
“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,” said Henry Klementowicz, deputy legal director at ACLU of New Hampshire, which also represents the plaintiffs. “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.”
Tirrell is a 16-year-old sophomore who plays on the girl’s soccer team at Plymouth Regional High School. Turmelle is a 15-year-old freshman who plans to try out for the girls’ tennis and track and field teams at Pembroke Academy. Both can play on girls’ sports teams while the lawsuit is pending, after a judge granted a preliminary injunction last September.
“It’s heartbreaking to have the federal government so aggressively go after our daughter,” Turmelle’s parents, Amy Manzelli and Chad Turmelle, said in a statement. “Iris is looking forward to playing spring sports and being part of a team. We just want her to be able to attend school and get the most out of her education — on and off the court.”
A day after Trump’s Feb. 5 order on transgender athletes, the NCAA revised its participation policy to restrict competition in women’s sports exclusively to athletes assigned female at birth. Earlier that day, the Education Department announced investigations into the University of Pennsylvania, San José State University and a Massachusetts high school athletic association over reported Title IX violations.
Later that day, it publicized additional investigations into the Minnesota State High School League and the California Interscholastic Federation. Officials from both organizations, which oversee high school sports in their respective states, said the executive order conflicts with state law. A spokesperson for the CIF told ABC10 the organization would follow California law.
In response, acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said both organizations “are free to engage in all the meaningless virtue-signaling that they want, but at the end of the day they must abide by federal law.”
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