Parents sue school district after being punished for ‘silent protest’

DAILY CALLERS NEWS FOUNDATION— A coalition of parents sued the Bow School District in New Hampshire on Monday after they were punished and threatened for a “silent protest” in support of girls’ sports.

Several parents and a grandfather decided to wear pink wristbands at a football game to show their support for protecting women’s sports, to which the school district threatened to have them arrested for trespassing, the complaint states . The New Hampshire Department of Education was temporarily enjoined by the court in September from enforcing a state law that barred biological males from participating in women’s sports.

The parents claim the district “conspired” with an arbitrator and a police officer to intimidate and prevent the group from expressing their First Amendment rights, the lawsuit says. After the football game, the school banned anyone speaking publicly from being on school grounds and attending future games.

“The Bow School District’s ban on protests criticizing the decision to allow biological boys to play girls’ soccer – cloaked in terms of ‘disruption’ and ‘harassment’ – constitutes unconstitutional discrimination.” , the lawsuit says. “The First Amendment does not allow public schools to become “enclaves of totalitarianism.”

School district policy allows officials to monitor the behavior of anyone on school property or attending a school event, which includes “any building, vehicle, property, land or facility used for school purposes or at school-sponsored events, whether public or private.” “, continues the complaint. The high school athletics handbook also states that it regulates the conduct and speech of those attending games.

A few days before the football game, Nicole Foote, the mother of one of the players on Bow’s team, met with the athletic director to express concerns about the potential risks of allowing a man biological to compete in women’s sports, to which the principal said the court stopped the school from doing anything, the lawsuit states. The athletic director sent an email the day before the game stating that, per the manual, they would “impose obligations” on any sideline action, noting that any “inappropriate signs, references or language” would not be allowed.

The athletic director also claimed that some differentiated opinions regarding the game would be acceptable, according to the complaint.

Some people wearing the pink wristbands had “XX” written on them in support of the female athletes, and no parents on the field wore them for the first half of the game. Besides the bracelets, there was no other indication of parents outwardly protesting, but the athletic director told one of the parents that he had to remove the bracelets, to which he then argued that the rights of the first amendment protect the use of bracelets.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill in 2023 banning transgender people from participating in women’s college sports. Similar to Texas, West Virginia passed a law banning biological males from participating in women’s athletics, but a court blocked the law in April.

Bow High School did not immediately provide comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation