A Philadelphia-based free speech group and two more residents have filed a legal brief in support of parents challenging a court ruling that sided with the Bow School District after it barred parents from wearing pink wristbands to protest transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), an advocacy group, filed a friend of the court brief on the lower court’s ruling, while private citizens William Hamlen of New Hampshire and Robert Charles of Maine also filed a similar separate brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Both filings argue that the April 14 ruling by U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe poses a serious threat to First Amendment rights.
Hamlen and Charles said in their court filing that the lower court’s decision “silences one viewpoint from an important public policy debate.”
“This lopsided result perverts the public square from a deliberative forum seeking truth to an oppressive show trial,” the document stated.
In its filing, the Foundation warned that the ruling could have broader implications, writing that it “will encourage other schools with subjective fears of psychological injuries to violate adults’ expressive rights.”
Their case stems from a lawsuit brought last fall against the Bow School District and Superintendent Marcy Kelley by parents Anthony Foote and Kyle Fellers, who said their rights were violated when the district issued no-trespass orders after they wore pink “XX” wristbands to a girls’ soccer game at Bow High School. The wristbands were intended as a silent protest against the inclusion of transgender athletes on girls’ teams. The “XX” symbol refers to the sex chromosomes assigned to females at birth.
Before a final judgment in the case, the parents asked the court to allow them to continue wearing the wristbands during the spring sports season.
Judge McAuliffe denied the request, ruling that the school district could prohibit the display of protest symbols — including the wristbands — at school-sponsored events.
The court determined that school grounds and events constitute a “limited public forum,” where officials may regulate speech to meet educational goals. He wrote that the “XX” symbol displayed on the pink wristbands might “poison the educational atmosphere.”
However, McAuliffe ruled that the parents remain free to express their views in other public spaces outside school-sponsored settings.
The parents, represented by the Institute for Free Speech, appealed the decision in May.
“The First Amendment does not permit school officials to infantilize adults in this way,” wrote the attorneys in their 118-page opening brief in their appeals case. “Finally, the court erred when it found that the XX message was psychologically harmful to transgender students, even though the record was devoid of such evidence.”
The court has not decided whether to hear oral arguments on the appeal yet.
Editor’s Note: This story was changed to reflect that the advocacy group and residents filed friend-of-the-court briefs in this lawsuit
Sruthi Gopalakrishnan can be reached at sgopalakrishnan@cmonitor.com
