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Why would Kearsarge School Board Chair Alison Mastin threaten to have a member of the public arrested for speaking at a public meeting?

According to the new lawsuit filed in the United States District Court in Concord, because the speaker called a biological male athlete who identifies as female a “tall boy.”

Beth Scaer, a well-known conservative Granite State activist, made her comment during an August meeting as the Kearsarge board was dealing with the state’s new law banning biological males from girls’ sports. Kearsarge is home to champion high school athlete Maelle Jacques, a boy who identifies as a girl and won first place in the girls’ high jump competition last year.

Maelle Jacques is not named in the lawsuit, but referred to as MJ. The Kearsarge School Board voted this summer to ignore the new law in order to allow Jacques to keep playing.

Maelle Jacques

During the August board meeting, “Mastin ruled Scaer out of order, declared the remainder of her three minutes forfeited, and stated that she would be removed by the police if she continued to speak. Mastin was visibly angry at Scaer,” the lawsuit states.

“School boards cannot invent speech rules on the fly to silence citizens expressing views they dislike,” said Institute for Free Speech Attorney Nathan Ristuccia, who is representing Scaer. “This unwritten rule about ‘derogatory’ comments gives the board unchecked power to determine which speech is acceptable and which isn’t—precisely what the First Amendment prohibits.”

Beth Scaer and her husband, Stephen “Sidewalk Steve” Scaer, came out to support the law that they say protects women and girls. They may have been the only ones in the room willing to speak out in favor of it, according to the lawsuit. 

All of the people who wanted to have their say during the public comment period were allotted three minutes, but warned “not [to] speak derogatorily about anyone or anything.” Jacques spoke, as did Stephen Scaer, who went into detail about “experimental gender medicine.”

Beth Scaer was the only speaker that night to get cut off before her three minutes were up. She started her prepared remarks about the potential physical dangers male athletes pose to females, noting that Jacques is much larger than the girls on the Kearsarge soccer team. When she used the phrase “tall boy” to describe Jacques’ physique, the hammer came down.

“Mastin interrupted and disallowed Scaer from saying anything further,” the lawsuit states.

Beth Scaer

Scaer was not told what law she broke or rule she violated during her short time speaking to justify getting threatened with police removal. It was later added to the board meeting minutes that the “tall boy” comment was the social sin. 

New Hampshire’s law banning biological males from girls’ sports has since been struck down by a federal judge using the controversial premise that males who identify as female are “girls” in the same way that biological girls are. That premise is likely to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Scaer says the lawsuit isn’t about her, it’s about protecting free speech.

“Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to address their elected officials without fear of censorship,” Scaer said. “This case is about ensuring that all citizens, regardless of their viewpoint, can participate in public meetings and comment on issues that are important to the community.”

Angry parents turned out at Weare Middle School on Tuesday night to protest the school’s decision to allow a biological male student to use the girls’ bathroom — over the objection of girls who are being forced to share the space.

The situation came to light when the girls started complaining to their parents about the boy, who just recently began “identifying” as a girl. Katie LeRoy was upset when her daughter told her about the situation last week. The male student had switched from using a single-person bathroom to the girl’s room.

“That does make me feel uncomfortable, and others (are uncomfortable) as well,” LeRoy said.

But school board Chair Christine Heath insisted they were following state law.

“As of today, it is the law in New Hampshire that discrimination is prohibited based on gender identity in regards to bathrooms,” Heath said at the start of the Weare School Board meeting.

School Board Chair Christine Heath, Board Member Sarah Button, and Board Member Daniel Recupero listen to parents Tuesday night upset that a biological boy is using the girl’s bathroom in Weare Middle School.

State Rep. Ross Berry (R-Weare) attended Tuesday’s meeting to support concerned parents. He told NHJournal Heath’s claim the school’s hands are tied is spin, not fact. It’s true the state has yet to pass a law explicitly giving schools and other institutions the right to protect women’s spaces from biological males. The school could choose to do so right now.

“They are interpreting the non-discrimination statute in a way that conveniently fits their worldview,” Berry said. “I have no doubt the school board would vote to allow boys in girls bathrooms if they were explicitly given a choice.”

Resident Nancy Brennan, a public school teacher in another community, told the meeting she supported allowing the male student in the girls’ bathroom. According to Brennan, biological sex is complicated. She cited people who are born intersex to explain that transgender people have always been part of human history.

“The idea there is only male and female is not scientifically correct,” Brennan said.

Being born intersex is an extremely rare medical condition affecting an estimated .05 percent of the population. It typically refers to people born with both male and female sexual characteristics, such as having both male and female sex organs.

Nobody has suggested that applies to the male student at Weare Middle School.

State Rep. Lisa Mazur (R-Weare) said parents and girls should be able to talk about their concerns without being labeled as bigots.

“Having this concern for girls does not make us transphobic, and we’re not bullies for speaking up,” Mazur said.

Parents have been reaching out to Mazur to tell her the girls are uncomfortable sharing their bathroom with a boy, and some of them are refusing to use the bathroom at the school. Mazur said the school should allow male students “identifying” as female to use single-person bathrooms or staff bathrooms, but not the girl’s bathroom.

A bill keeping biological males out of spaces for women and girls is making its way through the legislature. If it passes, Gov. Kelly Ayotte is expected to sign it.

Weare resident and Republican candidate for Congress Lily Tang Williams said the school’s policy to allow the biological male into the girls’ bathroom is damaging the school and will be costly for the community.

“You’re going to push more children to homeschooling and out-of-town schools. You need to reevaluate this policy,” Tang Williams said.

Berry reminded the board Weare’s schools are underperforming, according to data.

In the latest standardized tests, 32 percent of students were proficient in English, 24 percent in math, and 22 percent in science. The district is spending more than $21,000 a year per student. The district’s also seen a 28 percent decline in enrollment since 2016, Berry noted. Perhaps academic performance should be their priority.

One Weare father, who had been considering putting his homeschooled children into the public school, predicted even more students are likely to leave. Not because there is a transgender student, but because the handling of the situation raises questions about how the school will teach science and biology.

“That 28 percent will climb if this goes the wrong direction,” the dad said.

The Bow School District was acting within its authority to kick two soccer dads out of a girls game for wearing pink “XX” wristbands as a silent protest against biological males playing on girls’ teams, a federal judge ruled Monday.

But one of the dads, Anthony Foote, told NHJournal he plans to keep fighting for what he sees as the rights of women and girls.

“What was our offense? Supporting girls’ sports and defending biological reality?” Foote said. “This ruling is a slap in the face to every parent who believes schools should be a place of fairness, not political indoctrination. The judge openly admitted that Pride flags are allowed because they promote ‘inclusion,’ but wristbands defending women’s sports are banned because they might ‘offend’ someone. That’s viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple — and it’s unconstitutional.”

United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled against Foote, Kyle Fellers, Eldon Rash, and Nicole Foote in a 45-page order denying their preliminary injunction against SAU 67. The parents are being represented by the Institute for Free Speech, a legal nonprofit that promotes parents’ rights. Del Kolde, the senior attorney, said he is still considering his next steps in this case.

“We strongly disagree with the Court’s opinion issued today denying our request for a preliminary injunction. This was adult speech in a limited public forum, which enjoys greater First Amendment protection than student speech in the classroom. Bow School District officials were obviously discriminating based on viewpoint because they perceived the XX wristbands to be ‘trans-exclusionary.’ We are still evaluating our options for next steps,” Kolde said.

The crux of McAuliffe’s ruling is that while Fellers, Foote, and the others acted within their First Amendment rights to protest, venues like school athletic events are considered “limited public forums” and school officials acted within their legal authority to restrict what the parents said and did.

“The question then becomes whether the School District can manage its athletic events and its athletic fields and facilities — that is, its limited public forum — in a manner that protects its students from adult speech that can reasonably be seen to target a specific student participating in the event (as well as other similar gender-identifying students) by invited adult spectators, when that speech demeans, harasses, intimidates, and bullies. The answer is straightforward: Of course it can. Indeed, school authorities are obligated to do so,” McAuliffe wrote.

For days before the Sept. 10, 2024, game, Anthony Foote and Fellers made it known to school officials that they were unhappy Bow High School was going to play a game against a girls’ team with a biological male player, Parker Tirrell. 

Days before the game, Tirrell made national news with a court victory against the state of New Hampshire’s law barring biological males from girls’ sports.

The dads went on social media to discuss various protest ideas, according to the evidence in the case. McAuliffe wrote that it is reasonable, given the context of the game, for SAU 67 administrators to be concerned that the potential protests would be interpreted by Tirrell as bullying and harassing.

And as such, the judge ruled, the school had the right to limit the dads’ speech.

“The message generally ascribed to the XX symbol, in a context such as that presented here, can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women,” McAuliffe wrote. “Because gender identities are characteristics of personal identity that are ‘unalterable or otherwise deeply rooted,’ the demeaning of which ‘strikes a person at the core of his being,’ and because Bow school authorities reasonably interpreted the symbols used by plaintiffs, in context, as conveying a demeaning and harassing message, they properly interceded to protect students from injuries likely to be suffered.”

Fellers and Foote have maintained they were not targeting or harassing any particular student with their wristbands. McAuliffe ruled that, even accepting their stated intent not to harass Tirrell, the broader context for the game made the SAU’s actions reasonable and justified.

“While plaintiffs may very well have never intended to communicate a demeaning or harassing message directed at Parker Tirrell or any other transgender students, the symbols and posters they displayed were fully capable of conveying such a message. And, that broader messaging is what the school authorities reasonably understood and appropriately tried to prevent,” McAuliffe said.

Critics of the judge’s ruling say that it is clearly viewpoint discrimination and the judge’s view that “gender identity” is “inalterable” isn’t based on biological fact or in law.

McAuliffe has yet to rule on the permanent injunction. Fellers, Foote, and the other parents are seeking to allow them to protest at school games and other events. 

With spring sports starting soon, the parents suing the Bow School District over their silent protest want a ruling before players hit the field.

On Wednesday, attorneys representing the parents filed a request for an expedited decision on their request for a preliminary injunction keeping the school district from banning future protests. And, their lawyers told the court, if a ruling is delayed so long it keeps these parents sidelined, they will consider that a denial of their request for relief and pursue an appeal.

Anthony Foote, Kyle Fellers, Nicole Foote, and Eldon Rash were forced to end a silent protest — the wearing of pink wristbands marked with “XX” on the sidelines of the high school soccer field — by angry school administrators last September. They were protesting the fact that their girls team was being forced to compete against a biological male. 

After Foote and Kyle Fellers were slapped with “no trespass” orders from the school, orders enforced by the local police, the parents filed a lawsuit against the Bow school district.

The parents are being represented in court by legal nonprofit organization the Institute for Free Speech.

The lawsuit was filed in September, and United States District Court Judge Stephen McAuliffe has already conducted two days of evidentiary hearings and been fully briefed by both sides in the lawsuit, attorneys for the parent’s said.

But the court has yet to act on their request for a preliminary injunction protecting their First Amendment right to bring their wristbands to games during the upcoming spring sports season. In their view, it’s literally a case of justice delayed being justice denied.

“Spring sports season is the last chance for Plaintiffs to silently express their sociopolitical views at a Bow event this school year, and—because one of Plaintiffs’ children is a high-school senior—the last chance to ever express their views at one child’s events,” the motion states.

“Parties completed their post-hearing briefing on Dec. 17. No decision on the injunction has yet been issued. The winter sports season has now ended, and the Bow schools’ spring sports season begins March 24, with games commencing April 14.”

Two biological males who have been playing on girls sports teams are currently suing in federal court to block a New Hampshire state law protecting girls sports. When President Donald Trump issued an executive order doing the same thing, they added the president to their lawsuit.

One of those players, Plymouth High School’s Parker Tirrell, was on the team Bow was competing against during the previous silent protest.

McAuliffe previously overturned the Bow School District ban against the parents attending games and after-school activities. But he has not yet lifted the ban on wristbands or other forms of silent protest.

As the calendar progresses toward the new sports season and the final season for at least one of the girls, Feller, Foote, and the others want a decision now.

“Plaintiffs have been prevented from silently protesting at Bow School District extracurricular events during both the fall and winter sports seasons. Everyday that passes magnifies Plaintiffs’ injury. Unless they receive injunctive relief from this Court, they will not be able to express their viewpoint during the spring sports season as well, including all of one daughter’s remaining games as a high-school student,” the motion states.

“If no ruling occurs by April 14, Plaintiffs will understand this Court to have constructively denied the injunction, and pursue interlocutory appeal of that denial.”

McAuliffe has acknowledged there is nothing bigoted in the parent’s beliefs that biological males who identify as female should not play full-contact sports with biological girls.

“You’re entitled to your viewpoint, a lot of people hold it,” McAuliffe said.

In fact, polls show a solid majority of Americans support protecting girls sports from biological males. But Bow Superintendent Marcy Kelly doesn’t agree, and she told the court that expressing that view is offensive speech that should be banned.

“XX is a pretty well-known anti-trans symbol,” Kelly said on the stand.

Other controversial symbols, such as the LGBTQ “rainbow flag,” would be welcome, however.

“It’s inclusionary, it’s not targeting or harassing anyone,” Kelly said.

Two Granite State high school girls are so frustrated at having to compete against biological males in all-girls sports competitions that they want to join the ongoing federal lawsuit to defend New Hampshire’s women’s sports law, as well as the two executive orders issued by the Trump administration that protect women’s sports.

“Because I work so hard, it is frustrating and disheartening when it feels like the rights of female athletes are being sidelined or ignored,” one girl said in her court motion. 

Two New Hampshire girls, K.D., and B.W., filed motions along with other female athletes and the organization, Female Athletes United, this week to join the lawsuit brought by biological males Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle. The latter two are suing the State of New Hampshire and President Donald Trump for the right to compete in girls-only sports competitions.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Female Athletes United, an association of female athletes, filed a motion Friday with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire to intervene in the Tirrell v. Edelblut lawsuit.

The lawsuit was first filed in response to New Hampshire’s law, signed by then-Gov. Chris Sununu. But the lawsuit was expanded to include Trump after he signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said at the time.

Schools are required to comply with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex for programs receiving federal funding. The Biden administration issued a rule change declaring an athlete’s sex as “gender identity,” reversing decades of precedent.

The Trump order returned to the recognized biological definition of sex as determined by biology.

Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney with the legal non-profit Alliance Defending Freedom, said the case boils down to whether there’s a physical, biological difference between men and women. For Scruggs and the female athletes, it’s clear men and boys are different from women and girls.

“Biological difference is the obvious matter, and that’s why we’ll win,” Scruggs said.

However, the presiding judge in this case, United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty, previously wrote in an initial ruling that neither Tirrell nor Turmelle have any physical advantage as biological males.

“Neither Parker nor Iris have undergone male puberty. Neither of them will undergo male puberty. Both have received hormone therapy to induce female puberty, and both have developed physiological changes associated with female puberty. It is uncontested that there is no medical justification to preclude Parker and Iris from playing girls’ sports,” McCafferty wrote.

But K.D., who is from Bow, says in her motion that Tirrell had a definite advantage when she played against him, and he knocked her to the ground several times during game play. She described Tirrell as being larger and more muscular than the girls who were competing. The two played against each other during games in an indoor soccer league 

“In this league, I played against Parker on multiple occasions. Because I was scoring a lot, Parker was assigned to defend me, so we often came into physical contact with one another while playing. On several occasions, Parker knocked me down. It felt noticeably different than when I have run into a female when playing. Parker is sturdier, more muscular, and overall just built differently than a female,” K.D. said in her motion. “I was angry and upset that a male was playing against me and knocking me down. It felt inappropriate and unfair that something like this was happening and that no one in charge seemed to recognize what I and the other girls were going through in having to play against a male.”

Scruggs said K.D.’s experience shows that the popular talking point among activists — that ‘transgender’ players do not have any size or strength advantage over women and girls, is just wrong.

“We’ve seen this kind of false narrative on this subject for some time,” Scruggs said. “The fact is someone’s gender identification is not relevant to athletic performance, biology is.”

B.W., a Gilmanton girl, wrote in her motion that she was apprehensive when her team played against a high school team that included a large biological male as goalie. B.W.’s motion does not name the athlete, but stated she considered the male player’s presence a concern.

“Although we won, it still felt like a violation of the rights of female athletes to have a sports team designated for girls. Especially, because as the male student is the starting goalie, that student was taking a place on the field that would otherwise have gone to a female athlete. If a male student joined my team, I would strongly consider no longer playing for my school. I think it is unsafe and unfair for a male to take a girl’s spot on the girls’ team,” B.W. stated.

Both K.D. and B.W. illustrate the core problems with transgender athletes in girls sports, Scruggs said. 

“It’s a matter of fairness and safety,” Scruggs said. “These have real-world consequences.”

Scruggs said if actual biology is taken into consideration, then Tirrell and Turmelle’s lawsuit ought to be dismissed. 

Premier New England law firm Drummond Woodsum (DW) says it did not tell the school districts it represents in New Hampshire to break the law by destroying records containing student immigration data.

That’s because it is not illegal to destroy that data, Drummond Woodsum said in a statement sent to NHJournal.

“The advice we gave was similar to that provided by attorneys general in other states and was intended to support our clients in this time of uncertainty. We are dismayed that the content and purpose of the memo has been widely misrepresented,” the statement reads.

Drummond Woodsum sent a memo to school district clients in New Hampshire and Maine last week as President Donald Trump was issuing a flurry of new executive orders as part of his effort to deport millions of people who are in the country illegally. Among the orders is a directive to federal immigration agents to arrest people in sensitive areas like churches, hospitals, and schools.

According to the Drummond Woodsum memo sent last week, school district staff at times need to collect information on students’ U.S. citizenship, nationality, country of birth, U.S. entry date, the date a student first attended school, or the immigration status of the student or their parents or guardians.

But, the law firm warned, those districts should be careful not to keep that data.

“[T]his information should not be stored as part of a student’s education record and should be destroyed as soon as it is no longer needed,” according to the guidance they sent to some public schools.

After the Maine Wire reported on the memo, Drummond Woodsum issued its statement clarifying it does not encourage clients to obstruct immigration officials. Federal agencies already recommend schools destroy the sensitive data in question.

“Federal agencies have long advised schools not to maintain records of a student’s immigration status because doing so could be evidence of national origin discrimination; advice we reiterated in the memo. Contrary to what has been reported, DW did not – and never would – recommend that its clients violate state or federal law or destroy records to obstruct enforcement of the law,” the statement said.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits school districts from sharing sensitive student and family information with anyone without either family consent, or court order. As Trump’s immigration orders and directives make it possible for federal agents to conduct investigations and raids in public schools, Drummond Woodsum took the proactive step to advise clients to be prepared.

“Schools are often faced with the challenging situation where they are required to quickly respond to frequently-changing federal rules and policies, reassure their community, and answer questions from their teachers and staff – this situation is no different,” the Drummond Woodsum statement reads. 

There are not been any reports of ICE raids in schools or churches in New England.

Drummond Woodsum tilts decidedly left on the political spectrum. The firm includes a land acknowledgment on its website, honoring the ancestral lands of the native people who first inhabited Maine and New Hampshire. 

“Our New Hampshire offices in Portsmouth, Lebanon, and Manchester reside on the ancestral lands of the Abenaki and Pennacook. We recognize that these lands, like so many others, were not given up freely but taken by colonizers through the forced displacement and cultural and physical genocide of these Indigenous peoples,” the acknowledgment states. 

Individuals affiliated with the firm donated more than $46,000 to Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, according to Open Secrets. Drummond Woodsum also touts its work for President Barack Obama and the Maine House Democratic Caucus on its website.

In New Hampshire, the firm’s Meghan Glynn defended the Manchester School District at the state Supreme Court in the lawsuit brought after a mother discovered school staff were socially transitioning her child into a different gender without the mother’s knowledge or consent. 

The high school soccer referee who reportedly threatened to cancel a Bow girl’s soccer game because parents wore pink “XX” wristbands issued an apology as part of a settlement agreement in the ongoing federal lawsuit.

Soccer dads Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote, as well as Nicole Foote and Eldon Rash, filed the lawsuit against the Bow School District after they were ordered to remove their pro-girls sports wristbands at a Sept. 17 Bow game against another girl’s team that includes a transgender player. 

Fellers and Anthony Foote were later slapped with no trespass orders by the Bow School District.

Referee Steve Rossetti, who officiated the game, was named in the lawsuit for reportedly threatening to cancel the game if the parents did not remove the wristbands. But Rossetti was dismissed as a defendant this week. As part of an agreement reached with the parents, Rossetti wrote Fellers a letter of apology for swearing at him during a heated exchange.

“I did not choose my words very carefully during our exchange, and I regret any offense I may have caused you,” Rossetti wrote to Fellers. 

According to the original complaint filed in the United States District Court in Concord, Rossetti walked up to Fellers in the school parking lot after the game and let loose on the soccer dad.

“As the spectators and teams left to go to their vehicles, some expressed support for Fellers’ message while others criticized him. Rossetti, the referee who had threatened to cancel the game and make Bow forfeit, called Fellers a ‘f***ing a**hole’ and told him that his daughter would hate him,” the complaint states.

Rossetti works for the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association as a referee. He is not a school district employee. The lawsuit against SAU 67 and Superintendent Marcy Kelley, is still active, said Del Kolde, a senior attorney for the Institute for Free Speech which is representing Fellers and the other parents. 

“The case is proceeding against Bow School District and the named officials. We are still waiting for the district court to rule on our motion for preliminary injunction,” Kolde told NHJournal.

United States District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe has already overturned Bow’s no trespassing order that prevented Fellers and Foote from going to games and other after school events. But the parents want an injunction to allow them to be able to wear the wristbands and engage in silent protests at future games and school events.

Kelley testified in November that she deems the XX wristbands a problem because they represent an “exclusionary” anti-transgender view that only biological girls should be allowed to play in girl’s sports. Asked if she would ban rainbow wristbands to support LGBTQ+ players, Kelley said she would not.

“It’s inclusionary, it’s not targeting or harassing anyone,” she testified.

Bow’s Sept. 17 game was against the Plymouth High School girl’s team, which includes openly transgender player Parker Tirrell. The week before the Bow game, Tirrell won the right to play on the girl’s team in a lawsuit against New Hampshire’s law banning biological boys from girl’s spots, HB 1205. 

Tirrell played nearly the whole game against Bow on Sept. 17, and there are no reports of Fellers, Foote, or any other parents specifically targeting Tirrell during their wristband wearing, or making any harassing comments directed at Tirrell. 

Attorneys challenging Tennesse’s law banning sex-change medical procedures for children before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday struggled to make their case before skeptical judges. If the court upholds Tennessee’s law, that would add more support to a similar law here in New Hampshire.

The Biden administration’s Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar joined ACLU attorney Chase Strangio in challenging the law. They suffered a major setback when Strangio was forced to admit a commonly-used argument regarding sex-change treatment for minors and suicide is in fact false.

Both the Biden administration and the ACLU argue Tennessee’s ban, which is similar to the ban Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law this summer, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. They argue that because hormone treatments can be given to minors struggling with the impacts of puberty to advance their sexual development — such as giving males testosterone — but these treatments can’t be used to change a child’s sex — giving testosterone to females — it is discriminating on the basis of sex.

Without those treatments, children deemed to be suffering from gender dysphoria will be at risk of suicide, according to Prelogar.

“Left untreated, gender dysphoria can result in severe physical and psychological harms. Those harms include ‘debilitating distress, depression, impairment of function, substance use, self-surgery to alter one’s genitals or secondary sex characteristics, self-injurious behaviors, and even suicide,’” Prelogar wrote in her brief to the Court. 

Alito confronted Prelogar with multiple studies that found no significant change in suicide rates, including research from Sweden and Great Britain. For example, he cited the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, which found little evidence to further the viewpoint that the benefits of transgender treatment are greater than the risks.

“I wonder if you would like to stand by the statement in your position, or if you think it would now be appropriate to modify that and withdraw your statement?” Alito asked.

Chase Strangio, the ACLU lawyer who was born a biological woman and now identifies as a man, conceded the facts show suicide among untreated transgender adolescents does not happen, but claimed untreated transgender kids think about suicide.

“Completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare,” Strangio said. 

The actual rarity of transgender-identifying adolescents committing suicide hasn’t stopped Democrats from using the trope to argue in favor of surgically altering children or allowing schools to socially transition kids behind their parent’s back.

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley claimed transgender kids would kill themselves if schools were legally barred from hiding transitioning efforts from parents.

“[The children] will be kicked out or beaten (to death) or commit suicide,” Buckley wrote on social media.

Strangio also didn’t help the cause by appearing on CNN and suggesting that children as young as two years old know they were born in the wrong bodies.

“These are doctors who are wanting to treat their patients in the best way that they know how, based on the best available evidence to us,” Strangio said of doctors who give hormone treatments to young children. “And these are young people who may have known since they were two years old exactly who they are, who suffered for six or seven years before they had any relief.”

Given the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, it is likely to side with Tennessee and uphold the ban. The conservative justices generally expressed skepticism that the medical science surrounding transgender adolescents is settled as more data comes in from Europe showing the harms of using surgery and hormone therapy on children, contradicting the current state of medicine in America.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the fact that the medical communities in progressive European countries are expressing reservations should give leaders in America pause.

“If it’s evolving like that and changing, and England’s pulling back and Sweden’s pulling back, it strikes me as a pretty heavy yellow light, if not red light, for this court,” Kavanaugh said.

The United States Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over whether states have the right to ban gender reassignment medical procedures for minors. It’s a case that could impact New Hampshire’s newly-passed law.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Biden administration want to overturn the transgender surgery ban put in place by Tennessee. It outlaws doctors giving puberty-blocking medications to children whose parents identify them as transgender. The law also bans doctors from performing procedures like vaginoplasties, the surgical creation of a vagina from other parts of the body; phalloplasty, the surgical creation of a penis; and metoidioplasty, the transformation of a clitoris to a penis, on children.

Supporters of those bans note the surgeries are permanently disfiguring and difficult — if not impossible — to entirely reverse. Earlier this year, the Biden administration released a policy statement declaring its opposition to sex-change surgery for minors.

That was a reversal from the same Biden health officials whose original draft guidelines would have lowered the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.

In response to those aggressive actions by the federal government, states began passing laws banning the extreme procedures from being performed on children. Tennessee’s ban is similar to the law Gov. Chris Sununu signed this summer, HB 619.

“HB 619 ensures that life-altering, irreversible surgeries will not be performed on children,” Sununu said in his signing statement.

If the Biden administration and the ACLU are successful at the Supreme Court arguing against the Tennessee ban, HB 619 could be in trouble. However, conservative lawyer Ian Huyett with Cornerstone, said even if Tennessee wins, New Hampshire could still lose.

“The Tennessee case is about whether a state can ban gender transition therapy for minors under the federal Equal Protection Clause,” Huyett told NHJournal. “New Hampshire has a narrower ban on genital reassignment surgery on minors, RSA 332-M, that is similar to Tennessee’s law. A victory for Tennessee in this case could insulate that law from federal Equal Protection Clause challenges.

“However, our state courts in New Hampshire are the final authority on the New Hampshire Constitution—and they do not need to follow the federal courts. Our state courts could still hold that the state Constitution provides a right to chemically castrate minors, or a right to go into the locker rooms of the opposite sex. That could then be the law in New Hampshire for 10 years, regardless of what the US Supreme Court says,” according to Huyett.

The ACLU lawyer who will be arguing the case before the Supreme Court claimed Tuesday that children as young as two years old can “know” they were born in the wrong bodies.

“Our argument is that it treats people differently because of their sex,” attorney Chase Strangio — who was born female and now lives as a male — told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “These are young people who may have known since they were two years old who they are … It’s not the kids who are consenting to the treatment, it’s the parents who are consenting to the treatment.”

Strangio claimed years of medical data show gender reassignment surgeries and puberty blockers are good for transgender children.

“This is medical treatment that provides critical benefits to adolescents that need it,” Strangio said. 

However, the data does not actually show that children need gender reassignment. Great Britain banned puberty blockers for children after the National Health Service commissioned Dr. Hilary Cass to perform an independent review of medical treatment for children who identify as transgender. The Cass Report found a shocking lack of data to back up the life-changing treatments given to children.

“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” the Cass Report states. 

Several other European countries, including Sweden, Norway, and France, are taking a more restrictive approach to gender-reassignment procedures as more data become available.

In the U.S., however, studies that raise questions about gender reassignment have been suppressed or left unpublished due to politics.

For example, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is the group that developed the SOC-8 guidelines for medical care for children for the federal Health and Human Services agency. 

WPATH is the group that recommends castrations as a medical treatment for men who identify as eunuchs. Even still, WPATH’s first draft of the SOC-8 guidelines included age limits for children seeking gender reassignment treatment. But Biden’s Surgeon General Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, reportedly pressured WPATH to remove age restrictions from the SOC-8 draft, court records show. 

WPATH was caught hiding evidence that did not support gender reassignment surgeries and other treatments for children in other instances, according to court records.

Dr. Karen Robinson, research team leader from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine working on SOC-8, reported to HHS that WPATH was suppressing her research because it found there is no real evidence gender reassignment surgeries actually helped children. 

Robinson first reported to HHS that her researcher looked at the reported benefits of gender reassignment procedures and “found little to no evidence about children and adolescents.” At the same time she told HHS that WPATH was blocking her from publishing the report.

“[WPATH is] trying to restrict our ability to publish,” Robinson wrote to HHS.

WPATH was simply enforcing its policy that all SOC-8 researchers write articles that “use the Data for the benefit of advancing transgender health in a positive manner,” according to court records.

The ‘Soccer Dad’ season is over for Marc Jacques.

The father of a male Kearsarge High School athlete who’s a star in girls competitions, Jacques has agreed to start his prison sentence on a federal conviction for distributing child sex abuse images.

Marc Jacques was sentenced to five years in prison back in September. But using concerns over his child’s challenges as a male who identifies as female, he was given until December to turn himself in. Part of the reason was to let him attend his child Maelle Jacques’ girls soccer games.

When parents learned a man convicted of child porn charges was attending their daughters’ soccer matches, they immediately expressed alarm. They were even more upset when the elder Jacques was busted last month for allegedly accessing more child sex abuse images online while he was on supervised, pre-incarceration release.

Last week, Marc Jacques waived his violation hearing and agreed to begin his five-year prison term.

Maelle Jacques, a biological boy, dominated the girls track competition earlier this year. Maelle Jacques’ participation on the Kearsarge girl’s soccer team caused several teams to forfeit games as the district openly flouts a state law banning biological boys from girl’s sports.

Initially, girls on opposing teams and their families were concerned about the competitive imbalance presented by Maelle Jacques playing goalie, but they were later outraged to learn that Marc Jacques was attending the games despite his status as a convicted sex offender.

Marc Jacques used his child’s sexual identity to successfully plead for more free time before his prison sentence, telling United States District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro that Maelle Jacques needed him at the games.

“Maelle is going to need me to be present and in attendance to support [Maelle] and protect [Maelle] in the face of the fears [Maelle] will have of what could happen to [Maelle] on the athletic fields,” Marc Jacques wrote in a letter to the court.

Kearsarge officials knew about the conviction and sentence, but they allowed Marc Jacques onto school property to attend games anyway. They also said nothing to opposing teams when Kearsarge went on the road, either. Superintendent John Fortney said in a letter to parents there was no legal way for the district to stop Marc Jacques from attending the games.

“Because these events are open to the public, the district may restrict access only in the case of a prior civil no trespass order, or active court order. In general terms, we cannot selectively determine who may or may not attend any event,” Fortney stated. 

Whether or not the opposing school administrators had advance knowledge of Marc Jacques’ conviction, none of them seemed able or willing to put a stop to his presence.

Hopkinton school officials only found out about Marc Jacques’ conviction when Hillsboro-Deering mother Betsy Harington alerted them hours before Kearsarge and Marc Jacques were set to be in Hopkinton last month.

While Hopkinton did contact police to be present at that game, no steps appear to have been taken to either block Marc Jacques from the game, or alert Hopkinton parents. 

Officials at Bishop Brady High School in Concord were aware of Marc Jacques and his conviction before their game last month with Kearsarge. But Bishop Brady girls and their parents were advised by the Roman Catholic Diocese not to boycott the game. In fact, the girls and their families were told to play against Kearsarge so as not to discriminate against Maelle Jacques.