Transgender athletes open up about suing Trump administration over bans from girls sports
Two teenage transgender athletes who are suing President Donald Trump's administration told The Associated Press about their motivation for the lawsuit.
The two New Hampshire teens, 16-year-old Parker Tirrell and 15-year-old Iris Turmelle, are biological males who have played on girls sports teams for their respective high schools. They and their families originally filed a lawsuit last year to challenge a New Hampshire law prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in girls sports.
In February, after Trump signed an executive order banning trans athletes from girls sports nationwide, a federal judge granted a request to add the Trump administration to the list of defendants.
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Tirrell played girls soccer at Plymouth Regional High School in the fall.
"I just feel like I’m being singled out right now by lawmakers and Trump and just the whole legislative system for something that I can’t control," Tirrell said. "It just doesn’t feel great. It’s not great. It feels like they just don’t want me to exist. But I’m not going to stop existing just because they don’t want me to."
Turmelle, who attends Pembroke Academy, is interested in joining that school’s girls tennis and track teams, according to court filings.
"We don’t go to sleep in the day and go out at night and drink people’s blood. We don’t hate sunlight. We’re human, just like you," Turmelle said.
Turmelle spoke about not making the school's softball team.
"To the argument that it’s not fair, I’d just like to point out that I did not get on the softball team," Turmelle said. "If that wasn’t fair, then I don’t know what you want from me."
New Hampshire federal Judge Landya McCafferty, who was appointed to her seat by former President Barack Obama in 2013, granted a preliminary injunction Sept. 10, allowing Tirrell to play for Plymouth Regional and bypass the state law to keep trans athletes out of girls sports.
New Hampshire was already one of 25 states with a law in place to enforce similar bans on trans inclusion before Trump's executive order went into effect.
Tirrell and Turmelle's lawyers argue 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 people to discrimination in violation of federal equal protection guarantees and their rights under Title IX.
"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, a GLAD attorney, said.
The situation involving the two trans athletes has also prompted a second lawsuit after parents wore wristbands that said "XX" in reference to the biological female chromosomes and were allegedly banned from school grounds for wearing them.
Plaintiffs Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote sued the Bow School District after being banned from school grounds for wearing the wristbands at their daughters' soccer game in September.
In the lawsuit filed by Fellers and Foote, they allege they were told by school officials to remove the armbands, or they would have to leave the game.
Both of the fathers say the intention of the armband was not to protest Tirrell, but to support their own daughters in a game that featured a biological male.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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