Parents barred from soccer games for opposing males in girls' sports reach settlement
Parents have reached a settlement with a New Hampshire school district two years after they were told they could not express their opposition to allowing a trans-identified male to participate in a girls' soccer game, with one father being banned from attending his daughter's games for the rest of her senior season.
A Nov. 5 court order in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire shows that parents who wore wristbands supporting the preservation of school sports for biological women at a September 2024 soccer game reached an agreement with the Bow School District.
“Plaintiffs have a First Amendment right to silently wear pink wristbands bearing the XX symbol on the sidelines, in the spectator’s arena, or in the parking lot of any Bow District sporting event,” the order states. “Defendant Bow School District violated Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights when it barred Plaintiffs from wearing the wristbands at the girls’ varsity soccer game on September 17, 2024.”
Kyle Fellers, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement that he wore a pink wristband to his daughter’s soccer game "to stand up for what I believe."
"For that, officials ordered me to remove it or leave the game, and they banned me from school grounds, preventing me from watching half of my daughter’s soccer games during her senior year of high school. Something I will never get back," he said.
“It took more than two years, but the court has recognized that what happened to us was wrong,” Fellers added. “This was never just about sports. It’s about every parent’s right to peacefully express views without being punished for it.”
Additional terms of the settlement include $275,000 in attorneys’ fees paid to the Institute for Free Speech and Lehmann Major List PLLC, which represented the plaintiffs in their litigation against the school district.
“Parents don’t surrender their First Amendment rights when they walk into a high school soccer game,” said Del Kolde, a senior attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, in a statement reacting to the settlement.
“This judgment confirms that our clients had a First Amendment right to silently express their views on a major public issue even though school district officials disagreed with their views. We hope this victory will make other school officials think twice before silencing one side of a public debate.”
The original complaint, filed in 2024, said the plaintiffs wore the XX wristbands after a district court ruling blocked New Hampshire’s law banning trans-identified males from women’s sports. The game took place as the Bow High School girls’ soccer team competed against a team with a trans-identified male athlete.
School officials and law enforcement asked the plaintiffs to remove the wristbands, leading to verbal altercations and a 15-minute delay of the game. One plaintiff, Andy Foote, complied. Fellers declined, citing the First Amendment. Officials cited a school district policy mandating “mutual respect, civility, and orderly conduct among all individuals on school property or at a school event.”
The policy also prohibits spectators at sports games from taking actions that “Injure, threaten, harass, or intimidate … any other person” and “Impede, delay, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with any school activity or function (including using cellular phones in a disruptive manner).” Foote was banned from school property for four days after the game, while Fellers was banned for the rest of the fall sports season.
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire sided against the plaintiffs in 2025, but the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision earlier this year. The settlement was reached “consistent with the opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.”
The incident is part of a broader national debate over trans-identified male athletes in women’s sports. Opponents of policies that let athletes compete on teams matching their gender identity rather than their biological sex argue that biological differences between men and women give trans-identified males an unfair advantage over female athletes.
In addition to New Hampshire, 28 other states have enacted laws or regulations prohibiting trans-identified male athletes from competing in women’s sports: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Most recently, voters in Colorado and Washington approved bans on trans-identified male athletes in women’s sports by popular vote, but those laws will not take effect until 2027.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
