by Greg Piper
Appeals court with no GOP nominees says parents have no right to "preferred educational experience for their child," knowing their gender identity. Female athletes try to intervene in transgender challenge to NH girls' sports law.
Four centuries after founding New England, puritans are still squeamish about sex – but it's now the biological fact, not the procreative act, that bothers them.
The politically blue, conventionally secular region has become ground zero for legal battles over sex versus gender identity amid President Trump's executive orders, parents' fights against school districts and transgender students' fights against New England's quasi-red redoubt.
In less than a week, a Boston-based federal appeals court upheld school policies that hide students' gender transitions from parents, two federal agencies opened sex discrimination investigations of Maine that could halt its federal funding, and female athletes sought to intervene in a challenge to New Hampshire law that limits girls' school sports to females.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which lost its only Republican-nominated judge in 2022, ruled against parents Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri in their lawsuit alleging Ludlow Public Schools actively lying to them about not socially transitioning their daughter.
While they acknowledge the "fundamental importance of the rights asserted by the Parents to be informed of, and to direct, significant aspects of their child's life … parental rights are not unlimited," the three-judge panel wrote.
They may not "invoke the Due Process Clause to create a preferred educational experience for their child in public school" because "our pluralistic society assigns those curricular and administrative decisions to the expertise of school officials, charged with the responsibility of educating children," the ruling says.
Hiding gender transitions "does not restrict parental rights in a way courts have recognized as a violation of the guarantees of substantive due process."
$100 million for University of Maine at risk
The Bay State was an immediate target for the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which opened a Title IX investigation of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association – just a day after Trump's "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" order – for requiring girls' teams to let in males who "bona fide" identify as girls.
OCR also noted a Massachusetts girls' basketball team forfeited a game a year ago after an allegedly male player on the opposing team, playing in accordance with the MIAA handbook, reportedly injured three girls in the first half. Video shows one of the injuries.
Massachusetts has actually let males compete against females in school sports for five decades if the formers' schools don't have a boy's team, as noted by Boston Globe opinion writer Carine Hajjar, who called on the feds to scrutinize that law as they investigate MIAA.
She noted a female athlete went to the hospital in 2023 after a male on the opposing field hockey team hit her in the face with the ball, which prompted the girls' school district to let female players and coaches opt out of games with teams that include a male.
Another girls' field hockey team with a male won the MIAA Division 2 Championship and the male was named conference MVP, likely taking a scholarship from a female, Hajjar said.
OCR followed with investigations of the Minnesota State High School League and the California Interscholastic Federation. Last Thursday it praised the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association and New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association for scrapping their trans participation policies in the days after the Minnesota and California threats.
President Trump's exchange with Maine Gov. Janet Mills at a Friday White House meeting with governors, after the Maine Principals' Association flatly refused to follow his order, appears to have prompted DOE and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch Title IX investigations.
"Are you not going to comply with it?" Trump asked the Democrat, to which she responded "I’m complying with state and federal laws." He threatened to cut all of Maine's federal funding, she said "see you in court," and Trump predicted he'd not only win but Mills would ruin her political future because "your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports."
"Several hours later," according to News Center Maine, DOE's OCR said it was investigating the Maine Department of Education for allegedly letting males compete in girls' sports and denying "female athletes female-only intimate facilities," and a Maine school district for letting "at least one male student to compete in girls’ categories."
USDA joined the Pine Tree State pile-on Saturday, putting the University of Maine and its $100 million in USDA funding in danger due to the "blatant disregard" of the state's leaders for Trump's order. The notice of compliance review tells the university Title IX is "broader then just athletics" and warns "additional funding may be in jeopardy."
UMaine System spokesperson Samantha Warren emphasized to WGME the agency hadn't accused the university itself of wrongdoing and said it will "continue to comply with all relevant State and Federal laws and cooperate with any compliance reviews."
Mills blasted the DOE review Friday as a show trial whose outcome is "all but predetermined" and tried to deflect the focus away from the subject of males in girls' sports. She hasn't responded to the USDA review of UMaine.
"Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed" but he won't stop there, she said. "Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently?"
Judge calls gender identity 'immutable'
Transgender students Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, now 16 and 15, filed an amended complaint Feb. 12 adding Trump, DOE and the Justice Department to their lawsuit against New Hampshire for HB 1205, which prohibits males in girls' sports in which "selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or the activity involved is a contact sport."
Both are natal males who claim they will not "experience physical changes caused by testosterone, including the muscular development characteristic of males," because of their puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The New Hampshire Bulletin wrote a glowing profile of Turmelle this month, accepting the student's false claim that Turmelle is "female."
U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty, nominated by President Obama, blocked the law as to the plaintiffs last fall, identifying the subjective and often-fluid state of gender identity as an "immutable characteristic" on par with sex and race.
Female Athletes Unified, which defends female-only sports, has members in New Hampshire and was covered by an earlier injunction against the Biden administration's gender identity rewrite of Title IX, asked the court for permission to intervene in the legislation Friday.
One of its members has competed against Tirrell on her high school girls' soccer team and an "indoor soccer league," the filing says. Another played a team with a "male goalie."
By approving their first amended complaint last fall and "especially the second one" this month, McCafferty has "changed the game," FAU says. It's now a facial challenge to both state law and "the executive orders applying across the country."
"FAU’s members have lost to males in school sports and have lost their privacy rights to males entering private spaces," the filing says. "They expect both to happen again" and must be allowed to defend their interests in protecting the state law and Trump's orders, whether McCafferty "ultimately agrees with FAU on the merits."
Greg Piper
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/new-england-becomes-ground-zero-fight-against-males-girls-sports-secret
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