
Two New Hampshire teenagers have filed suit against President Donald Trump in the first legal challenge to his executive order dictating a national ban on transgender student-athletes in sports.
The complaint by the two student-athletes —Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 16 — amends a previous lawsuit they filed in August challenging New Hampshire’s so-called Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The suit adds Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter, and the Departments of Justice and Education as defendants.
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Trump admin threatens legal action against states that allow trans athletes in school sports
It’s not clear how far Trump will go to enforce this executive order.
“The sweeping National Sports Ban intentionally discriminates against transgender people, and is part of a systematic effort by Defendant President Trump and his administration to harm transgender people and prevent them from functioning in society,” the lawsuit argues. “Plaintiffs […] attend school with ongoing uncertainty and fear of an impending conflict between this Court’s orders and federal enforcement action against their schools and the attendant disruption of their participation in school sports.”
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The amendment contends that both Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order and his Day One declaration that there are only two “immutable” sexes unconstitutionally discriminate against trans people.
The case was filed by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire and GLAD Law, which also represents clients who have filed lawsuits challenging Trump’s military trans ban and the forced relocation of federal trans women inmates to men’s facilities.
Trump’s sports order bars trans student-athletes on girls’ and women’s teams in grade school and colleges and threatens to withhold federal funds from schools not in compliance. His “gender ideology” order is the basis of investigations announced Wednesday by the Department of Education going after two school sports associations in Minnesota and California after they pledged to adhere to trans-inclusive antidiscrimination policies in those states.
Trump has also called for all trans student-athletes to be stripped of their records and titles.
In the amended lawsuit, the two teenagers call Trump’s actions “a broad intention to deny transgender people legal protections and to purge transgender people from society.”
The lawsuit describes Parker as an avid soccer player, while Iris competes in tennis, track, and field. The complaint says both girls will “suffer immediate and irreparable psychological, emotional, developmental, and educational harm” if they’re banned from school sports.
“I played soccer — nothing bad happened,” Parker, a sophomore at Plymouth Regional High School, told The New York Times. “Not everyone was happy about it, but it seemed like the people I was playing against weren’t overly concerned.”
“The amount of effort [Trump is] going through to stop me from playing sports seems extraordinarily high, for not a very good reason,” Parker added.
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