Last week, the two teenagers who challenged New Hampshire’s 2024 ban on transgender girls participating in girls sports in schools dropped their lawsuit against the state, in part because they no longer play on their sports teams.
One moved out of the state entirely and the other, Parker Tirrell, left her soccer team last year.
This also comes after a June 30th Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes in sports at publicly funded schools, which the families’ lawyers said would make it harder to litigate against New Hampshire's law, but not impossible.
Sara Tirrell is Parker’s mother. She spoke with NHPR’s Julia Barnett to talk about the decision to drop the legal challenge and what the last two years have been like for her family.
Transcript
So Sarah, can you share some of your thoughts and the conversations that you had leading up to your family's decision to drop this lawsuit?
Unfortunately, it's been kind of a long time coming, right? We've been pretty familiar with how the Supreme Court has been ruling on things of late. And so it felt like the pretty obvious way that they were going to lean, was going to not be in our favor. So when it came down to it, when we talked to our attorneys and we talked to Parker, it really didn't make sense to keep going at this time — as hard as that was to decide.
And how do you feel now that you've dropped the lawsuit?
It's sort of a blessing and a curse, right? A blessing in the way that that's one less thing that we need to worry about. Especially for Parker. Sometimes she's up for it and sometimes she's not. She's a 17 year old kid, and it changes day to day.
For us, we were pretty happy just being a regular family before all this happened. And so I think we're going to be pretty happy being a regular family once all of this goes away. That said, it also feels like we didn't really get a chance to sort of fight the fight. We were up for it. We were ready for it. We just didn't really get the chance.
From a personal standpoint, this one was tough to take on the chin as a parent, because this is the very first time that my child has now officially been discriminated against in our state. We've been so lucky so far. Parker's grandfathered in to receiving gender affirming care. We've so far avoided all of the bathroom ban bills. But sports is now the first thing that she can't do because she's transgender.
When we spoke last, which was now about two years ago, it was shortly after then-Governor Chris Sununu signed the law that bans transgender girls from playing on sports teams. A lot has changed since then. What has life been like for the last two years for Parker and for your family as you've been navigating that?
I think there's a really stark difference for us. Parker came out as transgender right before her eighth grade year, and so she played soccer on the eighth-grade girls team and she played soccer on the varsity girls team her ninth grade year. And both of those were nonevents.
Starting in her sophomore year was right about when the lawsuit started. And that year was a little more stressful and difficult. There was a team that dressed for the game and then half of the varsity girls refused to play. There was another team that used eye black to paint ‘PGS’ under their eyes, [which stands for] “protect girls sports or protect girls soccer,” whichever, I didn’t really get clarification on what the ‘s’ was.
And then of course, there was the game that sort of hit all the newspapers when the parents were protesting with their pink armbands, with the two X's drawn on for double X chromosomes. The game was stopped for about 30 minutes.
That whole year was a lot of extra management, right? It was trying to figure out, were there any sort of local Facebook groups where parents were agitating about what they might be planning for the game? Lots of talking to athletic directors from visiting teams, occasionally calling police departments to see if they would have staff on hand in case they were needed.
But as we rolled into Parker's junior year, again, we're sort of on pins and needles about, what's the season going to be like? What kind of protesting are we expecting? Then midseason, maybe 3 or 4 weeks in, Parker decided to stop playing.
She said it wasn't fun anymore and she didn't really elaborate for quite a while, but some of it was the stress and sort of the circus that went on in the previous year. Not only did she not want to go that through that for herself, but she didn't want to put her coach or her teammates in that situation where they were never knowing what was going to happen, or were they going to have to drive the bus into a certain spot to let the kids off so that they avoided protesting in the parking lot? That kind of stuff. And although she loves the game, she does not love all the politics that surround the game at the moment.
You, your family [and] Parker have been in the public eye for two years now, telling your story, being in the news — local and national — and both of you have kind of had to turn into, basically, spokespeople for this issue. How has it felt to take on that role?
Well, we've always said that if it helps to tell Parker's story, we'll continue to do it. Parker, she says, “You know, if I could just sit down and talk with every single person in the world that doesn't know a transgender person, I think I could change their minds.” And I don't think she's wrong. She has had some success in sort of opening people's eyes to, sort of, transgender people being normal people.
The other family who was a part of this lawsuit, they recently made the decision to leave New Hampshire, citing the overall political climate for transgender people in the state. Has that thought ever crossed your mind? Leaving New Hampshire?
It crosses our mind all the time. As these bills have started to get more frequent in our state legislature, and then, of course, with the [Trump] administration coming in and like a rash of really harmful executive orders starting in 2025, those conversations started to ramp up for our family.
How do we keep Parker safe? What does the medicine look like for her? What does gender affirming care look like for her? We obviously talked about, what are our options? Do we stay where we are in New Hampshire and continue to fight and speak out? Do we relocate to a different state, which has its own complications?
My work is licensed in the state of New Hampshire, so if we move, I have to get a new job or re-license somewhere else. Our son enjoys in-state tuition. We are actively involved in the community. My husband's on the select board. I'm on a number of different volunteer boards. We have family generations deep in New Hampshire, so leaving them all behind is really hard.
And we question every day, are we doing the right thing? As we look around, we see more and more families of transgender kids leaving the state. I can only think of one that's left that's in a similar position to ours. Everybody else has already left.
But for now, the line that we've drawn in the sand is Parker's medical care. And so, as long as she can continue to receive medical care, then we'll stay here for as long as we can.
Despite the lawsuit coming to a close, Parker has expressed to you that she wants to keep fighting and advocating. What does that look like for her?
Again, it's day-to-day. But for her, I think that will include continuing to testify in front of committees for the Senate and the House of Representatives. At our state level, it'll mean continuing to work with advocacy groups like New Hampshire ACLU and 603 Equality. It may mean occasional media stories if there's something relevant to discuss.
So I think Parker has indicated that she still has the stamina to continue telling her story and standing up for what she believes is right and fighting against discrimination. And on the days that she doesn't have the spoons to do it, her dad and I have thicker skin and more stamina. And so we stand in and tell her story when she can't.
While this particular story is about sports, it's not really about sports, is it? It's about one more chain in that fence around my daughter's life, liberty and happiness.
As she says, it's a slippery slope. If you can take away my right to play sports, what stops you from taking away my next right and my next right?
And so that's what we're here for, to continue to try and preserve the rights and freedoms for everybody, including my daughter.
