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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 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. 

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.

One of the Bow parents fighting for his right to bear pink, XX wristbands at school athletic events faced a slightly skeptical judge during Thursday’s hearing in the United States District Court in Concord.

When asked by Judge Steven McAuliffe why he wore the wristbands to a Bow girl’s soccer game in September, Anthony “Andy” Foote testified he wanted to support girls in girl’s sports, and not negatively target people in the transgender community with his protest.

“The bottom line is girls are losing what they fought for,” Foote said. 

But McAuliffe wasn’t sold on that explanation, saying it reminds him of the people who protested against the Vietnam War when he was a young man.

“They said, I’m not protesting the war, I’m supporting peace,” McAuliffe said. “I don’t see the difference there.”

Foote, along with fellow soccer dad Kyle Fellers, Foote’s wife Nicole Foote, and Eldon Rash, are suing the Bow School District after they were banned for the offense of wearing pink wristbands marked with XX. Thursday’s evidentiary hearing will allow McAuliffe to decide if the parents can put on the wristbands at games or not. More testimony is anticipated Friday.

After Foote and Fellers were forced to remove the wristbands at the Sept. 17 game, and Fellers was ordered to leave the field, both men were served with no trespassing letters from the Bow School District that banned them from their children’s games and other school events. McAuliffe overturned the ban last month, but he did not block the district’s prohibition against silent forms of protest.

When questioned by the attorneys, both Fellers and Foote maintained on the witness stand they were supporting women’s sports by wearing the wristbands. But McAuliffe wanted to establish Foote and Feller’s need to publicly support for women isn’t occurring in a vacuum. 

“The object of your protest is, ‘I don’t like the fact a trans girl is playing on a girl’s team,’” McAuliffe said. “It’s all about the trans girls playing on girls’ teams.”

McAuliffe previously suggested there is nothing bigoted in believing that transgender girls — aka “biological boys” — should not play full-contact sports with biological girls. He said again Thursday that opinion is not out of bounds.

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

Bow’s Sept. 17 game was against the Plymouth High School girl’s team, whose roster includes biological male 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. 

In the days leading up to the game against Plymouth, and after Tirrell’s legal victory, Foote sent an email to Bow Athletic Director Mike Desilets demanding action to protect the girl’s team.

“Where’s your courage? Where’s your integrity? Stand up for real women or get out of the way,” Foote wrote.

Desilets also received an email from another parent warning about planned disruptive protests at the Plymouth game by angry parents. Foote said that email, warning that soccer dads planned to wear dresses and harass Tirrell, is not based on any facts and the writer had no conversation with him about his protest plans.

And, it was pointed out, none of those events happened.

Instead, the four wore their pink wristbands, there was no comment made toward Tirrell during the game, and no mention of any specific player.

“This was not about heckling Parker Tirrell,” Foote said.

McAuliffe also viewed the police body camera recording of the confrontation between Bow Police Lt. Phil Lamy and Fellers. Fellers had been ordered to leave the field after becoming verbally combative with officials. At his car in the parking lot, Fellers held up a sign with a “Support women in women’s sports” slogan and got into another verbal altercation with Lamy when the game ended.

Fellers was reportedly holding up his sign in the direction of Plymouth’s team bus, but said he did not notice the bus and had no intention of targeting Tirrell.

“I don’t believe anybody should intimidate anybody,” Fellers said.

McAuliffe’s questions about Foote’s intent highlight the nuance in the legal issues at play. While there’s a free speech right to protest, there are also laws against harassment. The school district has maintained it was trying to protect Tirrell from anti-transgender harassment when officials confronted the parents over the wristbands and forced them to remove the items. 

However, that does not explain why the parents were subsequently banned from all after school events. That may be cleared up Friday when Bow Superintendent Marcy Kelly is expected to testify.

The people who allowed a man convicted of distributing child sex abuse images to roam the sidelines at Kearsarge girls’ soccer games are silent now that he’s been arrested yet again, on charges he possessed yet another stash of child pornography.

But one of the parents who blew the whistle on Marc Jacques, Betsy Harrington, is still speaking out. The mother of a Hillsboro-Deering High School student, Harrington, was shocked when she learned about Marc Jasques’ conviction and the fact his status as a felon was being hidden from parents. Harrington first learned about Marc Jacques after she saw him at a girl’s soccer game earlier this month.

“The school never told the girls, never told the parents,” Harrington said.

Many of the Hillsboro-Deering girls boycotted the game with Kearsarge over Maelle Jacques’ participation, a scenario repeating itself all this season. Nearly 6 feet tall, biological male Maelle Jacques is already a champion girls track athlete, easily beating his biologically female competitors during the state championship this year. 

Marc Jacques and Kearsarge have been riding the wave of progressive support for males who identify as female, getting Maelle Jacques nominated for a Biden White House “Girls Leading Change” award. 

A day after the game between the Kearsarge and Hillsboro-Deering girls soccer teams, Harrington was horrified to learn about Marc Jacques’ conviction. Harrington started contacting school officials, police, elected representatives — anyone who might be able to do something about Marc Jaques being at the game.

“Someone has to listen,” Harrington said.

Marc Jaques isn’t going to more games any time soon. He’s locked up as a danger to the community after he was arrested Friday for having a new, secret stash of child sex abuse images, according to court records.

Multiple public officials knew about his conviction for months, and still let him go to games to watch his child compete. In fact, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Jane Young, it took the efforts of many concerned parents like Harrington calling to get the United State Probation Department to take a second look.

“I commend those parents for calling here. I would ask if there is a parent who has a concern that they continue to call,” Young said.

Marc Jaques pleaded guilty in February to sharing dozens of videos and photos depicting child sex abuse images with pedophiles online. Law enforcement found hundreds of abuse videos and photos on Marc Jacques’ digital devices. He claimed in court that he suffers from a sex addiction.

According to court documents. Marc Jaques spent years chatting online with predators, sharing his fantasies about raping children, and even tracking down the identity of at least one of the victims and sharing that identity with other disturbed men online. And yet school officials allowed him to attend Kearsarge girl’s soccer games.

That stands in stark contrast to the treatment of two parents in Bow, N.H., who were slapped with no trespass orders by the Superintendent of Schools for wearing pink wristbands with “XX” written on them to girls soccer game to show their support for girls-only sports.

Kearsarge School District Superintendent John Fortney, Assistant Superintendent Michael Bessette, and School Board Chair Alison Mastin, all failed to respond to requests for comment NHJournal. A review of Kearsarge school board meetings indicates the board held a non-public session in September dealing with the Marc Jacques legal question.

After the guilty plea, Marc Jacques was free on bail pending his sentencing hearing in the United States District Court in Concord. He was sentenced to five years in prison last month, but given until December to report to the Bureau of Prisons to begin his sentence. From his guilty plea through to his arrest last week, Marc Jacques was under no legal restriction to stay away from people under the age of 18. 

However, according to his sentencing form filed in court, once he serves his prison sentence and is released on probation, Marc Jacques will be prohibited from any contact with a child under 18, and he will be prohibited from even going to a park, playground, or sporting event where people under the age of 18 will be present. 

Chief United States Probation Officer Kevin Lavigne declined to speak in detail about Marc Jacques’ release conditions, and he could not answer why a man deemed too dangerous to be around children once he has served his prison sentence was allowed to be around children before he reported to prison.

Harrington, a retired prison counselor who worked with convicted sex offenders, said Marc Jacques’ treatment throughout the case makes no sense. He first popped up on law enforcement radar for child sex abuse image distribution years before he was arrested, she said.

“I don’t think we know the depths of his offending yet. I think the biggest problem was the length of time he had to reoffend,” Harrington said. “There was too much time between the time he was caught, to the time he pled guilty, to the time he was sentenced, to the time he was incarcerated. It all added up to too much time available to reoffend. Plus he was around girls the whole time.”

Harrington thinks Marc Jacques used the debate over his child Maelle Jacques to create sympathy and get a light sentence and easy pre-incarceration conditions. While Young’s office sought 78 months in prison for Marc Jacques, he ended up with a 60-month sentence. Harrington thinks the many school and court officials who should have known better caved to the transgender narrative Marc Jacques pushed.

“That was why he got the weaker pre-incarceration conditions,” Harrington said.

Before his sentencing, Marc Jacques wrote a letter to the court pleading for leniency. His argument was that Maelle Jacques needed him to support the process of gender transition. In the letter, Marc Jacques stated Maelle Jacques’ mother does not think gender transition is the right treatment.

“Transgendered teens have the highest rate of suicide in the United States, and I am afraid for Maelle and her path if she is forced to live with her mother and her stepmother in a home where she is not supported and feels unwelcome,” Marc Jacques wrote.

United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Jane Young

Young said the Probation Department claimed they had Marc Jacques on some of the strictest pre-incarceration conditions available, and that he had been complying with all of those supposedly strict conditions. 

“We considered him somebody who needed to serve a significant period of time in prison, but we also had information about him abiding by those conditions. We are only as good at the information we are given,” Young said.

After a flood of calls from parents like Harrington, the United States Attorney’s Office contacted Probation about concerns that Marc Jacques was a danger. Marc Jacques’ probation officer then checked his monitored internet and found a new, illicit digital storage device was being used. On that device were more images of child sex abuse, according to court records. 

“It’s disturbing and quite frankly unacceptable,” Young said.

Young deferred questions to Lavigne, but said this case highlights the need for greater scrutiny of probationers and their conditions. Without tight conditions and assertive probation officers, prosecutors and judges are left in the dark, Young said.

United States District Court Judge Landya McCafferty ruled again Tuesday to prevent New Hampshire from enforcing its law keeping biological males from participating in girls sports.

The judge extended a temporary order allowing 15-year-old Parker Tirrell to play on the Plymouth High School girls soccer team. Tirrell and 14-year-old Iris Turmelle have filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s new Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.

When Gov. Chris Sununu signed the law last month, he made New Hampshire the 26th state to pass laws protecting girls sports from male athletes.

New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and his office are defending the law, both in New Hampshire and at the national level. His attorneys are in court before Judge McCafferty, and he’s joined 25 other state attorneys general urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue.

“We remain committed to vigorously defending this new law and will determine next steps once the Court issues its order,” Formella said.

In New Hampshire, both sides have requested a bench trial, rather than a jury trial. McCafferty signaled during Tuesday’s hearing she will likely rule in favor of Tirrell and Turmelle, saying she believes the New Hampshire law violates Title IX, the law that protects women’s sports, and Title XII, the law against employment discrimination. 

If McCafferty does strike down the law, the decision to pursue an appeal will almost certainly be made by New Hampshire’s next governor. And if it is a Democrat, it’s all but certain the law will be allowed to die and girls will be competing against biological males once again.

Neither former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig nor Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington would respond to questions about this case from NHJournal. However, they’ve both made it clear they oppose the new law.

“These bills are an attack on at-risk trans kids across New Hampshire. Our state needs leadership focused on delivering results, not division. As governor, I will always stand up for the right of our residents to live authentically, without demonization,” Craig said.

Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington, who is challenging Craig in the Democratic primary, linked banning boys from girls sports teams to violent hate crimes when the law was signed this summer.

“We’ve seen a rise in hate crimes against our LGBTQ+ community, in part because radical Republicans have villainized trans kids who’re already vulnerable & at a higher risk of suicide. When I’m governor, everyone will be free to love who they love & be who they are,” Warmington said on social media.

The two GOP candidates for governor have a very different view.

Chuck Morse, running against Kelly Ayotte in the GOP primary, says he’d fight for an appeal if elected.

“As governor, I would absolutely pursue an appeal if the court finds against the state. It is a question of fairness and protecting the rights of women to play sports on a level playing field. To me it is simple: boys should play against boys and girls should play against girls,” Morse said.

Ayotte agrees.

“As the only candidate for governor who has actually argued before the Supreme Court, I will do whatever it takes to defend our state. As the proud mom of a three-sport state champion female athlete, I believe protecting women’s sports is a matter of fairness. Women fought for decades to achieve that fairness through Title IX. When I am governor, New Hampshire’s female athletes will have a champion in the Corner Office,” Ayotte said.

Polls show Granite Staters overwhelmingly support allowing girls to compete in girls-only sports, rather than forcing them to compete against biological males who identify as female. It’s not just theory, either. A biological male took first place in the girls high jump competition earlier this year, beating every female in the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association (NHIAA) indoor track and field championship.

At the global level, the top two boxers in women’s Olympic boxing both had male chromosomes.

Lawyers for Tirrell and Turmelle want to block the law from taking effect throughout the state, arguing that stopping transgender girls from playing girls sports is discriminatory.

“This law was designed to prevent trans girls from playing sports with other girls … The only difference is their sex assigned at birth. Girls not assigned female at birth are being excluded,” said Chris Erchull, an attorney with GLAD, the GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders organization which is representing Tirrell and Turmelle.

Assistant Attorney General Micheal DeGrandis argued legal precedent allows public institutions, like schools, to make distinctions between boys and girls. The New Hampshire law makes that distinction in an objective, equitable manner by requiring every student to play on sports teams that correspond to their biological sex at birth.

“We’re not trying to define ‘sex’ at all, we’re just saying ‘What does it say on your birth certificate,’” DeGrandis explained.

While the law might mean students like Tirrell and Turmelle are required to play coed sports instead, that does not make the law unconstitutional. The law was crafted as a way to protect competitive fairness in girls sports, and to keep biological girls safe from possible injury, DeGrandis said.

“There was no discriminatory intent or animus. This was an attempt to solve legitimate problems, even if people disagree with the best way to do it,” DeGrandis said.

The appropriate remedy for those opposed to the law should not be in court, DeGrandis said, but in the democratic political process, who noted there is an election happening in a few months.

“The Court should not be making decisions for the legislature,”  he said.

McCafferty extended the temporary restraining order that allows Tirrell to practice and play soccer with the girls team for another two weeks. McCafferty could rule on an injunction the teens are seeking against the law during that time. That injunction would likely be in place through any trial.

A former Exeter High School student disciplined after he was falsely accused of using the wrong pronouns lost his lawsuit even though school officials lied on the stand, a judge ruled on Monday.

Rockingham Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman quoted the band Buffalo Springfield (“There’s battle lines being drawn; Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”) and the movie “Casablanca” in his 18-page ruling that blasts school officials for their dishonest testimony.

Exeter High School Assistant Principal Marcy Dovholuk and Football Coach William Ball both testified during last year’s bench trial that the boy was suspended from the football team because he used supposedly inappropriate language like “bozo” and “STFU” in a text conversation and not because he allegedly misgendered another student. 

“The school officials’ purported shock at plaintiff’s use of the terms ‘bozo’ and ‘stfu’ has all the believability of Captain Renault’s famous exclamation of shock in Casablanca. Context is everything,” Schulman wrote.

But the student still lost his case because New Hampshire law does not allow public institutions like schools to be held accountable for violating civil rights unless there are at least monetary damages, according to Schulman’s ruling.

“Because New Hampshire law does not recognize a private cause of action for a political subdivision’s violation of a plaintiff’s State Constitutional rights in the absence of bodily injury, property damage, personal injury or statute, the court grants judgment to the defendants,” Schulman wrote.

Attorney Richard Lehmann, who represents the student and his mother, called Schulman’s ruling a partial victory because the judge found the facts favor his client, even if the law does not.

“My clients won this case on everything but the law. The court believed their testimony and did not believe the testimony of school officials when they said that they did not take any action against my client because he expressed his beliefs,” Lehmann told NHJournal.

The boy, who has since transferred to another school, is referred to as MP in the lawsuit to protect his identity. MP and his mother were seeking $1 in nominal damages from the school for violating his free speech and religious rights. The student’s belief in only two genders is informed by science and his Catholic faith. 

Christian advocacy organization, Cornerstone, backed  MP’s lawsuit, and plans to back his appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

“Cornerstone and its attorneys look forward to appealing this decision to the New Hampshire Supreme Court—which will be bound by the trial court’s findings of fact—and to securing a ruling that will protect free speech and religious liberty for all Granite State students,” said Cornerstone’s Executive Director Shannon McGinley.

MP’s beliefs became a problem in September 2021 when he was a freshman and a member of the high school football team. While talking to friends after school on a bus, MP expressed his belief there are only two genders, according to the fact Schulman recites in his ruling. Another student, referred to as AG, took offense to that comment even though she was not part of the conversation and the comment was not directed at her, according to the ruling.

“AG formed the opinion that [MP] had the subjective  belief that there are only two genders. In fact, that is exactly what [MP] believed. He follows what he represents  to be the Catholic religious doctrine that God created human beings as male or female,” Schulman wrote. “AG believed differently and she took it upon herself to correct [MP] by saying in a loud and somewhat aggressive tone of voice that there are more than two genders.”

MP disagreed and said he believed there are openly two genders, and the conversation on the bus ended there. However, AG did not want to let it go and got MP’s cell phone number. She then restarted the argument via text later that evening, according to the ruling. 

“How are you in high school and don’t know the difference between sex and gender? Give a valid reason why ‘there’s only 2 genders,’” AG demanded via text.

AG was seeking a fight when she sent the text unprompted, and continued to argue with MP into the night, according to Schulman.

“The court pauses to consider the import of AG’s text: She intruded upon the plaintiff’s private life by sending an  uninvited and borderline hostile text to him directly. She asked a question, thereby inviting a response. She had no reason to expect that the response would be an apology indicative of cheerful agreement with her point of view. The tenor of her text did not suggest a desire for an open exchange of views. At best AG was proselytizing; at worst she was berating,” Schulman wrote.

Throughout the following text discussion, MP seems to want to end the conversation without backing down from his views, while AG continued to push her views. During the argument AG condescended to MP for his “ignorance” on gender. For his part, MP seemed to want to end the argument.

“Just STFU and leave me alone. U brought this up knowing ur wrong bozo. So grow up and maybe then you’ll realize that there are only 2 genders and sexes,” MP wrote.

But AG would not let the matter go, according to the ruling. The next day she sent an email to Ball that made false accusations MP engaged in “extreme ” transphobic bullying, according to Schulman. Neither Ball nor any other school official bothered to investigate AG’s accusations before they took action against MP, according to Schulman. Based on testimony and evidence presented at the trial, Schulman found no evidence MP engaged in any transphobic bullying.

Dovholuk and Ball decided to punish MP for his alleged transphobia, but in a way that left no paper record, according to Schulman. Instead of a formal write-up, Ball was authorized to suspend MP from the football team for up to a week.

On the witness stand, both Ball and Dovholuk claimed the punishment was for using the disrespectful terms “bozo” and “STFU,” and not for stating he believes there are two genders.

“The court does not believe the school witnesses on this point. The school witnesses are honorable people in an honorable profession, but, in the court’s view, they were dishonest about their motivations,” Schulman wrote.

Neither Ball nor Dovholuk responded to a request for comment. SAU 16 Superintendent Esther Asbell is out of the office until July 30. School Board Chair Bill Gauthier declined to comment Monday, saying he had yet to read the ruling.

“She cannot get back the life that was stolen from her.”

And that’s why Amanda Stewart of Jaffrey is suing her former endocrinologist Dr. John Turco, along with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health and others, who she says misled her into inappropriate “gender-affirming” surgeries and treatments that left her in pain and have ruined her life.

“Instead of protecting and properly treating Amanda, who was and remains an extremely vulnerable and unstable individual, these doctors and health care providers, and the organizations and facilities at which they worked, harmed her deeply under the pretense of providing so-called ‘gender-affirming care,’” according to the lawsuit filed in Hillsborough Superior Court — South last week.

The suit names Turco, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Cheshire Medical Center, Monadnock Family Services, and several individual doctors for years of alleged malpractice Stewart says have “harmed her deeply.”

“She will never be able to conceive and bear a child. Even if she could conceive a child, she would never be able to breastfeed her child. She lives in daily pain from the effects of the unnecessary surgeries and years of taking enormous amounts of cross-sex hormones,” according to the lawsuit. “She will never look the same and has to deal daily with severe alterations to her female body, such as bone structure and unwanted body and facial hair. She cannot get back the life that was stolen from her.”

Josh Payne, with the Texas law firm Campbell Miller Payne, said Stewart wants the healthcare system held accountable for misleading her for more than a decade and changing her life for the worse.

“Amanda’s story is a heart-wrenching representation of the negligence and lack of proper procedure in the practice of so-called ‘gender-affirming care,’” Payne said.

Stewart had a troubled early life, starting when her mother died when she was 14. Stewart, who is autistic, struggled with anxiety, depression, and loneliness throughout her teen years, according to the lawsuit. That was made worse when she ended up in a group home for a period of time, according to the lawsuit.

She started seeing Turco in 2007 when she was 22, and he immediately started pushing gender-affirming care without proper consent or full disclosure of the potential impacts, according to the lawsuit. Start’s lawsuit claims Turco never gave her any other choice.

“Defendants recognized that Amanda was mentally fragile and suffering, such that she would not be an appropriate candidate for so-called gender transition medicalization under any criteria, but they proceeded to medicalize and operate on her anyway,” the lawsuit states. “Indeed, on or about December 11, 2007, Dr. Turco wrote to a counselor Amanda had seen and a primary care doctor for Amanda, stating, ‘I am really worried that [Amanda] does mostly suffer at the present time from some psychological issues other than [her] gender identity issues.’”

But Turco soon had her taking massive quantities of testosterone, bringing her level far above those of biological men, according to the lawsuit. 

“[I]n July 2011, Dr. Turco noted that Amanda’s testosterone level was ‘very high at 2,640 ng/dl with the normal adult male range being 241-827,’” the lawsuit states.

Stewart suffered several mental health crises, some resulting in stays in the New Hampshire Hospital, as her physiological symptoms worsened while taking testosterone, the lawsuit states. Throughout her time with Turco, he made several notes that her symptoms improved when she stopped taking the hormone, and yet he continued to prescribe it in high dosages, according to the lawsuit. 

She would go on, under Turco’s care, to get a double mastectomy as well as a hysterectomy and oophorectomy, to remove her uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. She also had a procedure to close her vagina, according to the lawsuit.

Turco is known as a progressive advocate promoting sex reassignment procedures, receiving a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for social justice from Dartmouth last year.

But according to the lawsuit, Turco and other doctors who saw Stewart ignored the medical standards for gender-affirming care, such as the “Benjamin criteria,” which state cross-sex hormones “should not be administered without adequate psychological and medical assessment before and during treatment” and that problems should be well-controlled. 

“Yet these criteria were not remotely met in Amanda’s case according to the medical records produced prior to Plaintiff filing this lawsuit. “Amanda was not receiving testosterone with adequate psychological and medical assessment before and during treatment, and her problems were not well-controlled,” the lawsuit states.

These procedures were done without the psychological referrals necessary under the Benjamin criteria standards, according to the lawsuit. In fact, both surgeons who performed the procedures noted her impaired mental state when they saw her prior to the surgeries, according to the lawsuits.

Turco did not begin to question if Stewart was mentally competent to make decisions about her gender until 2016, after years of testosterone treatment and the surgeries. That was when Stewart had stopped taking the testosterone and stopped identifying as a man.

“Dr. Turco also noted that Amanda was not then living as a ‘transmale.’ Dr. Turco noted his belief that Amanda’s ‘underlying psychological issues’ made it ‘very hard for [her] to understand, evaluate and implement exactly what is [her] gender identity.’ Despite these observations, Dr. Turco continued to prescribe testosterone to Amanda,” the lawsuit states.

None of the doctors or counselors who saw Stewart questioned the care until she saw psychologist Dr. Carey Bluhm in 2019. At the time, Turco and staff at Dartmouth were pushing her to get more surgery.

“Dr. Bluhm expressed to Dr. Turco’s office his concerns that Amanda had Asperger’s and admitted to having ‘delusional events.’ Dr. Bluhm also expressed ‘reservations’ about additional plastic surgery procedures Dartmouth-Hitchcock staff had been meeting with Amanda about,” the lawsuit states.

Turco began acknowledging in 2021 that Stewart is, in fact, a woman despite the surgeries. In 2022, after she was taken to the hospital with suicidal ideation, Turco noted the testosterone treatments had “complications.”

Dartmouth Health did not respond to a request for comment. 

A biologically male athlete is expected to win big at the NHIAA indoor track championship this weekend while competing against girls. And there is currently nothing anyone can do about it. 

Not that Granite State Democrats want to. They’re opposing legislation to protect female athletes from male competitors. And one House Democrat dismissed concerns about the track meet as unimportant because it involves an “obscure competition.”

Kearsarge Regional High School sophomore Maelle Jacques, who competes on the Kearsarge girl’s team, has already racked up numerous first place wins competing against female athletes at other Division II schools over the past two seasons.

This season, Jacques dominated in the high jump competition and is the only athlete in the state competing in the girl’s division to break five feet. Competition among high school boys in New Hampshire has seen more than a dozen athletes break the five-foot mark this season.

Kearsarge Superintendent Winfried Feneberg released a statement declaring Jacques has the right to compete in any sport and as a member of any gender.

“Each student-athlete has the right to compete in the activity of their choice,” Feneberg said. “We believe that limiting access to any activity violates our core mission and vision, which are grounded in supporting every student and student-athlete’s right to pursue their goals and interests,”

Outspoken supporter of women’s athletics and 12-time All-American swimmer Riley Gaines responded to the Maelle Jacques story by calling out the athlete’s parents.

“How could the parents of this boy allow their son to cheat deserving women out of opportunities? And why don’t the parents of the girls stand up and say ‘no’ for their daughters?” Gaines posted on social media. “This country is full of failing, gutless mothers and fathers.”

The championship scheduled for Saturday at Plymouth State University is being held under the aegis of the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association. While NHIAA Executive Director Jeffrey Collins did not respond to requests for comment, the organization is fully supportive of allowing athletes to choose their gender for the purposes of competition.

“The NHIAA is committed to providing transgender student-athletes with equal opportunities to participate in NHIAA athletic programs consistent with their gender identity,” the NHII eligibility policy states. “The NHIAA has concluded that it would be fundamentally unjust and contrary to applicable state and federal law to preclude a student from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the public gender identity of that student for all other purposes.”

Parents could change this if they started getting involved at the local school board level, said Shannon McGinley, executive director of Cornerstone Action.

“If school boards feared their constituents more than they feared (law firm) Drummond Woodsum and leftist superintendents, in a matter of months, we could have half the school districts in the state organized into an alternative NHIAA,” McGinley said. “The solution is for parents to stop accepting cowardly excuses from school board members who ran as conservative.”

Sen. Tim Lang (R-Sanbornton) is sponsoring SB 524 to address what he sees as the basic unfairness of male athletes forcing their way into sports for girls and women. Lang’s bill requires high school and college athletes to compete in the division that matches their biological sex at birth. 

“I’m a father of four kids, two of whom are girls, and I would not want my daughters bumped from a sports team because a biological male, who had a physiological advantage, chose to play on that sports team,” Lang said.

Biologically male athletes have inherent and obvious physical advantages against women and girls, he said. Medical science shows men have high bone density, more muscle mass, and even process oxygen differently than women, Lang said.

Rep. Timothy Horrigan (D-Dover) testified against SB 524 on Tuesday, arguing that “so-called ‘biological females’” did not need protection from males in their sports.

“We’re especially worried about cis women or cis girls, but this also prevents trans men from competing,” Horrigan said.

And Horrigan dismissed the case of Maelle Jacques because it involves an “obscure competition.”

“We don’t even know if she’s actually trans,” Horrigan said of Jacques, “but if she is, that’s certainly a very unfair thing [to keep her from competing]. A lot of these cases, they are pretty obscure competitions that normally sports fans wouldn’t be paying much attention to.”

Lang says his bill is not an attempt to create culture war headlines over people who suffer from gender dysphoria. He simply wants to protect women’s sports and preserve the mission of Title IX.

“This isn’t about gender; this is about biological sex,” Lang said.

Exeter High School Athletic District Bill Ball said the school respects all students.

But the attorney for an Exeter student who was punished for expressing his opinions about gender said the school needs to respect the rule of law.

During the bench trial in Rockingham Superior Court, Ball and Assistant Exeter High School Principal Marcy Dovholuk explained why they punished a Catholic student for what was a private text sent outside of school.

The football coach benched the freshman student for one game in 2021 over a discussion he had with a classmate. He is seeking $1 in damages. He also wants Ball to admit wrongdoing. The student insists he was punished for defending his view that there are only two genders, male and female.

His attorney, Richard Lehmann, told NHJournal Exeter is another example of New Hampshire school districts running roughshod over anyone who disagrees with the new, extreme gender mores.

“It’s bad enough that children are made to feel uncomfortable expressing traditional views on matters related to gender in school,” Lehmann said. “Or when schools announce they will lie to parents about their children’s in-school gender expression, as Manchester, Exeter, and other schools do. But it’s made even worse when schools reach beyond their gates and into children’s private lives and seek to control their behavior at home or in private communications with other kids that happen entirely outside of any context related to the school,” Lehmann said.

Lehamann’s client, John Doe, is using a pseudonym to protect his identity. He has since left Exeter and is enrolled at a Catholic high school. Doe testified he was talking with friends on a bus after school about another student who claimed to be “non-binary” during Spanish class. Doe testified he thought that odd since the Spanish language relies on feminine and masculine genders.

The non-binary student was not involved or aware, of the conversation at the time.

Instead, a female classmate who was not part of the conversation later confronted Doe, insisting that humans come in more than two genders. Doe and this female student then got into a heated conversation, with Doe arguing the mainstream stance that there are two sexes. Doe based this view on both science and his religious beliefs.

The girl texted him later that evening to continue the argument. At one point, Doe told the girl to “STFU,” which he testified was an attempt to be funny.

The next day, Doe was called in by Dovholuk and informed he would be punished for the conversation he had the night before over text. Dovholuk claimed the punishment was for bullying and bad language and not Doe’s beliefs regarding gender.

“At Exeter, we respect people, and we respect how they identify,” Dovholuk reportedly said.

Ball testified he told Doe, “We respect all.”

Lehmann said the United States Supreme Court already ruled that schools cannot punish students for things they say off campus. In June 2021, the High Court ruled against a Pennsylvania high school that suspended cheerleader Brandi Levy for using the f-word in a social media video about the cheer team.

“Three months before the facts of this case arose, the United States Supreme Court dismissed an athletic sanction imposed by a coach because the authority of the athletic department to penalize students for engaging in free speech could only extend to off-campus, non-school activities in rare circumstances,” Lehmann said.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that school districts cannot police students’ speech when they are not in school.

“From the student speaker’s perspective, regulations of off-campus speech, when coupled with regulations of on-campus speech, include all the speech a student utters during the full 24-hour day. That means courts must be more skeptical of a school’s efforts to regulate off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot engage in that kind of speech at all,” the justices wrote.

The Doe case is now being considered by Judge Andrew Schulman, who is expected to render a verdict in the coming weeks. Doe is doing well at his new school, Lehmann said.

“He is a great kid from a terrific family, and Exeter High School is a lesser place because of his absence.”