Two transgender girls can try out for and play on girls school sports teams while the teens challenge a New Hampshire ban, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The families of Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 14, sued in August seeking to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law in July. While Turmelle doesn’t plan to play sports until December, Tirrell successfully sought an emergency order allowing her to start soccer practice last month. That order was expiring Tuesday.
In issuing a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty found Tirrell and Turmelle were likely to succeed in their lawsuit. She found that the students “demonstrated a likelihood of irreparable harm” in the absence of a preliminary order.
In theory, I agree, but the reality is not that simple. There aren’t enough resources for everyone to play on every team, so there is selection, and tons of kids in high school pin their future hopes on doing well in sports. It’s ridiculous, and I hate the fact that school sports are so competitive as a result, but that’s the world we live in. Nobody is allowed to just play for fun. So as long as someone thinks their kid might be excluded or overshadowed because some other kid is “cheating”, there will continue to be conflict. It’s another aspect of the zero sum mentality.
While I guess areas may be different, the high school I went to, and also the area I now live in, have varsity and JV teams. You had to be good enough to make varsity, but no one got cut from JV. Just belonging on a team is enough for some kids to make it all bearable. Everyone mentions scholarships, but how often is this honestly actually an issue?
Not just how often is scholarship but how many trans kids are even gonna apply to teams for this to be a problem. Judging by how much some people bitch and moan it almost seems like every single team in the world is getting overrun as we speak by trans athletes. Also why the fuck is the ‘party of small government’ getting involved by passing laws about this, leave it to the fucking commission of each sport once it reaches that level where it matters, they can put it to a vote and handle it or whatever the fuck they wanna do.
For perspective, one of the states in the southwest (I think New Mexico) tried to pass a similar ban and it got overruled by a judge because it was found that it would affect a total of 4 girls in the entire state, and the judge felt that that violated the federal law that says that you can’t make a law that targets specific people (ie you can’t make it illegal for Mike and Jerry specifically to join the basketball team).
Good for that judge.
Your experience is very different to mine. I went to high school in the 90s. Even back then, both JV and varsity were cut teams for most sports. Some sports were popular enough that they had no-cut teams for underclass kids. But that cost money for extra coaches, equipment, gym time, travel, etc… I was able to play basketball on the freshman and sophomore teams, but I was never good enough to make JV, let alone varsity. Now my kids are in high school and it is even more competitive, because the schools in our area have more students and less money per student for sports. My son tried out for freshman basketball. There were 60 kids trying out for 10 spots. He didn’t make the cut. Only kids who had already been playing on district select teams for years did.
I want to be clear: I don’t think it’s fair to ban trans kids from playing sports on any team. But I also don’t think we can expect people to just get over it. In their minds, at least, there’s too much at stake.