Two transgender girls who were the first to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” have withdrawn their lawsuit in New Hampshire based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports and their own personal hardships, their lawyer said.
“This case was always about two courageous young girls who simply wanted the same opportunities as their peers to participate in school life,” their lawyer, Chris Erchull of GLAD Law, said in a statement Thursday. “Their willingness to stand up to extraordinary hostility made clear the human cost of laws that target transgender youth.”
The teenagers, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, took on Trump’s executive order last year, amending their 2024 complaint against New Hampshire’s law on banning transgender girls from school sports. A federal judge had granted a court order allowing them to play as the case proceeded.
For Tirrell, it meant being able to keep playing on her high school girls’ soccer team. For Turmelle, it was having a chance to try out for different sports.
Both sides agreed to pause the case and wait for a ruling from the Supreme Court as it considered similar state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school and college athletic teams in Idaho and West Virginia. Last month, the court upheld the laws. It also said that barring transgender girls and women doesn’t run afoul of the federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Several key rulings came out of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, including a block on the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
One teen and her family decided to move from New Hampshire
Turmelle and her family moved out of New Hampshire last summer following proposed legislation against transgender people. One measure signed into law by Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte last year prohibits medical professionals from providing puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy to new transgender patients under age 18.
“Though there may be a carve-out for people already receiving gender-affirming care, that is way too close a call for us to risk staying,” Turmelle’s mother, Amy Manzetti, wrote in an op-ed piece at the time. “Other New Hampshire laws also seek to erase her.”
Most Republican-controlled states in the past five years have adopted laws or policies limiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors and limiting which school bathrooms transgender people can use, as well as sports restrictions. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that about 3% of youth ages 13 to 17 identify as transgender.
“The challenges with relocation are significant and burdensome — this includes having to find new employment, buying and selling homes, packing and moving possessions, integrating kids with a new school system, losing access to longstanding family and friends, and potential loss of income,” Corinne Goodwin, the executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equality Project in Pennsylvania, said in an email.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against two transgender students who sued to overturn their states’ bans against playing on girls’ and women’s teams.
“But these families do so because they love their kids and know that supporting them with the care and opportunities they need is critical to their long-term success and happiness.”
The other teen gave up playing soccer at high school
Tirrell, 17, began her junior year last fall on the girls’ junior varsity soccer team. Things were fine at first, and each time she scored a goal, she got a round of ice cream from her parents. But a few weeks into the season, she decided to stop playing.
“With all of the political stuff going on, soccer wasn’t just about the game anymore,” her mother, Sara Tirrell, told The Associated Press in an interview.
It became more about preparing for the possibility of conflict.
“Were there any local Facebook groups where they were sort of agitating about potential protests and how do we prepare, and what are we walking into, and we never kind of knew,” she said. “We were on a lot of pins and needles, especially after the previous season.”
She was referring to a controversy at an away game where two dads from an opposing team were banned from school grounds for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes. They sued the school district and a judge ruled against them. They have appealed their case.
Last fall, there was an increased presence of school administrators at the games and bus drivers pulled in closer to the field so the students weren’t in the parking lot, she said.
“Parker didn’t talk about it a lot, but I think she could see that stress for everybody — for her, for her teammates, for her coaches,” Sara Tirrell said. “She felt kind of bad about pulling them all into that circus again. And so she ultimately said, ‘This isn’t fun anymore and I don’t want to do it.’”
Parker’s father described the atmosphere as “palpable tension.”
Even playing on her own turf, “there would typically be a couple of police officers at the home games where there weren’t previously,” Zach Tirrell said.
In the past, Parker also played soccer in a recreation league and could still do so.
“But I think it all kind of still sort of weighs on her,” her mother said. “It’s the same group of kids that she plays with who, honestly, have been very supportive and love to have her on the team and have expressed that to her many times over. But I think she still has that worry in her brain around, ‘What are other people going to say and do if I show up at a game?’”
Parker’s parents hope she’ll return to playing soccer some day. In the meantime, “she plans to be around and use her voice to continue standing up to discrimination,” her mother said. “In some ways she’s had to grow up a lot faster than some of her peers.”
Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this article.
Two students challenging New Hampshire’s ban on transgender athletes on girls sports teams will also fight President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” after a judge approved their request Wednesday.
It’s believed to be the first time that the constitutionality of the executive order signed by Trump last week is being challenged in court, according to Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, also known as GLAD Law, one of the groups representing the teens.
“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,” said Chris Erchull, a GLAD attorney.
Last fall, a federal judge in New Hampshire ruled that the two students can try out for and play on girls school sports teams while the teens challenge the state ban.
A federal judge in New Hampshire ruled that two trans student athletes are temporarily allowed to play girls sports while their case plays out in court.
The families of Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 14, sued in August, seeking to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that former Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law in July.
Tirrell is a 10th-grade student who plays on her high school soccer team and Turmelle is a ninth-grade student who plans to try out for tennis in the spring.
“I love playing soccer and we had a great season last fall,” Tirrell said in a statement. “I just want to go to school like other kids and keep playing the game I love.”
Trump’s order last week gives federal agencies wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
GLAD and ACLU of New Hampshire asked the judge for permission to add Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the U.S. Department of Education and acting Secretary Denise Carter as defendants.
An email seeking comment was sent to the White House Press Office.
In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty said she “finds good cause” for the lawyers to amend the lawsuit.
The lawyers say Trump’s executive order, along with parts of a Jan. 20 executive order that forbids federal money from being used to “promote gender ideology,” subjects the teens and all transgender girls to discrimination in violation of federal equal protection guarantees and their rights under Title IX.
The lawyers also say the executive orders unlawfully subject the teens’ schools to the threat of losing federal funding for allowing them to play sports.
