Families harbor ‘no regrets’ after ending legal challenge of N.H.’s transgender sports ban
Parker Tirrell was 13 when she came out as a transgender girl to her family, and for a while, life went on much as it had before.
She played soccer, the game she picked up at age four, had sleepovers with her friends and watched movies with her family.
In 2024, when the state of New Hampshire banned transgender girls from playing school sports consistent with their gender identity, she and her family sued. That’s when everything changed.
The litigation thrust Parker into the spotlight, one that followed her straight into the hallways of her school.
Her mother, Sara Tirrell, said classmates taunted Parker to “use her man voice,” and the harassment sometimes escalated into threats of sexual assault. It didn’t stop when she left the school building; the hate followed her online, too.
“She didn’t mind being in the public eye,” Tirrell said. “What she didn’t like was being in the public eye in school because it wasn’t always positive attention for her.”
On Wednesday, Parker and her family, along with Iris Turmelle, another transgender girl who joined the fight with her family, dropped their lawsuit against the state’s sports ban.
Their decision followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling, which held that states can legally separate school athletics by biological sex without violating the Constitution or federal Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination in education.
Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney at GLAD Law, which represented the families, said the lawsuit became “a heavy burden on these two young, brave children who were trying to fight for their rights.”
“It was appropriate to drop the case because of that reason more than anything else,” said Erchull. “They were just told by the Supreme Court of the United States that it’s okay when states exclude them from school, and their lives are continuing to be burdened by the litigation.”
Erchull was clear that dropping the case doesn’t mean the fight is over, and he called the Supreme Court’s decision wrong.
“I think that Title IX clearly does protect the right to be free from discrimination and education based on your sex, which is exactly what is happening to students Parker and Iris and the plaintiffs in the West Virginia and Idaho cases,” he said.
The cost of fighting
Iris Turmelle, 16, didn’t endure the same bullying Parker did, according to her mother, Amy Manzelli. But the toll on her family was its own kind of heartbreak.
Iris and her family lived in Pembroke, and she attended Pembroke Academy when the litigation began nearly two years ago. Last year, they packed up and left — disheartened and driven out of New Hampshire by a relentless tide of anti-trans bills introduced session after session.
The political climate for transgender people in New Hampshire didn’t feel right, said Manzelli.
“I feel that Maine is a better place for transgender people, including transgender kids, to be than New Hampshire,” Manzelli said. “The environment here is terrific. There are open celebrations of pride and queerness every which way you turn.”
With the family already resettled in Maine, dropping a lawsuit tied to a school sports ban in the state they’d left behind made sense. It was one feweer battle to fight from a distance.
Iris Turmelle (left) with her family, mother Amy Manzelli, sister Ida, and father, Chad Turmelle, in their Pembroke home. Credit: GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor Staff
Still, the move has been anything but easy. Iris had to leave behind her grandparents, her cousins, her friends — everything familiar — and start over in a new life she didn’t choose.
Manzelli said Iris is still coming to terms with it and it’s taken a toll on her health.
“Every single aspect of her entire life, everything, was in New Hampshire,” Manzelli said. “We had to tear her out of it. No high schooler wants that, and no high schooler especially wants that because their existence is being made illegal.”
Watching other families leave the state has left Tirrell quietly questioning herself, wondering if she’s doing right by her own daughter.
“The line that we’ve drawn in the sand is medical care, and so Parker can still get that,” she said. “Thinking about moving is a really tough and heartbreaking decision, and we know what the threshold is for ourselves, and we’re not there yet.”
Both mothers admit to a strange, aching mix of feelings: disappointment that the fight had to end this way, but also a small relief that their daughters, who want to keep fighting, can finally exhale and move on with their lives.
Losing soccer
Parker gave up soccer last year, a sport she once loved with her whole heart, after wave after wave of hostility wore her down.
She was hassled by the boys’ soccer team at her own school, Plymouth Regional High School; part of the Merrimack Valley School District’s varsity team refused to play against her; and some kids have refused to high-five Parker at the end of a game, according to her Tirrell. At another game where Parker was playing, a group of parents in Bow appeared wearing pink armbands with “XX” symbols — a symbol referencing the sex chromosomes associated with biological females — to protest the participation of transgender girls on girls’ sports teams.
With Parker no longer on the field, ending the lawsuit felt to her family like a natural next step rather than a retreat.
Parker Tirrell warms up with her teammates at Plymouth Regional High School before their friendly scrimmage with White Mountain Regional High School on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. Credit: GEOFF FORESTER—Monitor staff
“She’s not a big bad monster out there trying to knock people down on a soccer field, or harass people in a bathroom, or try and turn anybody else’s kid gay or transgender or anything like that,” Tirrell said, feeling frustrated. “She’s just trying to live her life.”
Even as she absorbed all of this, Parker noticed the toll it was taking on everyone around her — her teammates, her coaches, her athletic directors.
Tirrell said that sometimes at away games, local police departments were called ahead of time to make sure someone would be available if something happened during the game.
There was an underlying tension before and during games. It wasn’t about the fun of playing soccer anymore, Tirrell said.
Now that the lawsuit has been dropped, nothing stands between the law and its full effect: Transgender student athletes in New Hampshire, from fifth grade through high school, will only be allowed to play on teams matching the sex they were assigned at birth. This applies to students both in public and private schools.
But both Iris and Parker intend to keep advocating for transgender people’s rights.
“Despite everything, I do feel hopeful,” said Manzelli. “I just wish I knew when the hate towards transgender people was going to end. I really don’t question that it will end. I just wish I knew when and how.”
National and local trends around anti-trans policy had already prepared both families for when the Supreme Court’s decision would land. The braced for the blow, knowing it would come.
Tirrell was downstairs in her home office when the news hit her feed. She climbed the stairs to tell her husband, and moments later, Parker wandered out of her bedroom.
Tirrell told her the news and pulled her daughter into a hug.
No one in the house was surprised, she said.
Tirrell said Parker rolled her eyes, scooped up her cat, and hugged him tight — the same small ritual she performs every single morning — and then simply moved on with her day.
There have been moments, Tirrell admits, when the exhaustion and hate made her want to walk away from the fight entirely, but Parker, wanting to fight, has always kept the family going.
“It’s been tough. It’s been hard, but there are no regrets,” Tirrell said. “Parker has also been very clear that she is not done fighting and she’s not done advocating.”
