NH Union Leader – December 12, 2024
By DAVE PIERCE, Union Leader Staff
Attorneys for the teens suing the state over its new anti-transgender sports law said they plan to object in federal court to dismissing state Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut as a defendant.
On Friday, the state asked U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty to remove Edelblut from the lawsuit brought by the families of Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle. Lawyers on both sides filed a joint motion Wednesday to extend the deadline for the plaintiffs to object from Dec. 20 to Jan. 10 to accommodate tight schedules during the holiday season.
Also on Wednesday, Chris Erchull, a lawyer for Tirrell and Turmelle, said Edelblut was correctly named as a defendant, and their side would object to the state’s motion to remove him from the litigation by the newly proposed deadline. If the court agrees to the new deadline, the state would have until Jan. 31 to reply to the objection. Each side is also waiting for approval of their jointly proposed schedule for the trial. The schedule calls for starting the trial on Nov. 10, 2025.
Erchull said he expects the court to adopt the framework of the schedule, but the actual court date would depend on the court’s availability.
Edelblut’s name, on or off the defendants list, doesn’t affect the status or substance of the case because the respective school districts for Tirrell and Turmelle are both named in the suit, Erchull said. Families for the two high school students filed the lawsuit in August to challenge the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” which Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law in July. The law requires athletes in grades 5-12 to play on interscholastic or club teams matching the sex on their birth certificates.
McCafferty granted a temporary order allowing Tirrell, 15, to participate in interscholastic girls soccer for Plymouth Regional High School in August and then in September blocked enforcement of the law while it’s being challenged in court. Turmelle, 14, was seeking to play girls sports this winter at Pembroke Academy.
Previously, McCafferty said the act “on its face, discriminates against transgender students in violation of Title IX and the U.S. Constitution.” “The stigma and humiliation that comes from such treatment of a child at the hands of the State is substantial and irreparable,” McCafferty wrote in her September ruling. The state is seeking to dismiss Edelblut on the basis that as commissioner of the Department of Education, he does not have the authority to enforce or regulate any provisions in the law. That state did not ask for the removal of any of the other defendants, which include members of the State Board of Education, the Pemi-Baker Regional School District, the Pembroke School District and members of those two districts’ boards in their official capacities.
Transgender sports participation has been a flash point for parents groups and transgender advocates across New Hampshire this year. In a separate lawsuit, parents are suing Bow school officials for barring them from school grounds after they wore pink wristbands with “XX” in black lettering on them to protest a transgender athlete playing in a girls soccer match on Sept. 17.
In October, the Bishop Brady High School varsity girls soccer team pulled out of a game against Kearsarge Regional High School in protest of competing against a team with a transgender player.
In November, attorneys for Tirrell and Turmelle asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional for all transgender students in New Hampshire, not just their clients.