Parents and a grandfather who wore pink “XX” wristbands at a Bow High School girls soccer game in 2024 have settled their free speech lawsuit against the Bow School District, the Institute for Free Speech announced Thursday, Nov. 5. U.S. District Judge Steven J. McAuliffe signed a stipulated judgment that day declaring that they “have a First Amendment right to silently wear pink wristbands bearing the XX symbol” at district sporting events, the group said.
The district’s risk pool, Primex, will pay $275,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs, with $225,000 going to the institute and $50,000 to the plaintiffs’ local law firm, the institute said. “It took more than two years, but the court has recognized that what happened to us was wrong,” said Kyle Fellers, one of the parents.
Two of the parents and the grandfather wore the wristbands at the Sept. 17, 2024, game, where the opposing team had a transgender player. “The ‘XX’ symbol represents the sex chromosomes assigned to females at birth,” the Concord Monitor explained.
“Parents don’t surrender their First Amendment rights when they walk into a high school soccer game,” said Endel Kolde, a senior attorney at the institute.
What the Bow School District Settlement Says
A stipulated judgment is one both sides agree to, and this one was entered as part of the settlement. It says the plaintiffs can wear the wristbands “on the sidelines, in the spectator’s area, or in the parking lot of any Bow District sporting event,” according to the institute.
Kolde said the judgment “confirms that our clients had a First Amendment right to silently express their views,” the Monitor reported.
It binds the district and its Board of Education even if policies change, and the court keeps jurisdiction to enforce it, the institute said. The separate settlement agreement the institute posted records that the district “denies liability or wrongdoing.” “We hope this victory will make other school officials think twice before silencing one side of a public debate,” Kolde said.
The four plaintiffs are Fellers, Anthony Foote, Nicole Foote and Eldon Rash, whom the institute describes as parents and a grandfather. Each will get $17.91, “a sum symbolizing the year the states ratified the First Amendment,” the institute said.
The deal let the parents wear the wristbands on the sidelines Friday night, Nov. 6, when Bow was set to play Hollis-Brookline High School for the Division II state championship in Exeter, the Monitor reported. “This was never just about sports. It’s about every parent’s right to peacefully express views without being punished for it,” Fellers said in a statement quoted by the Monitor.
Bow won it. After two overtimes, Bow’s goalkeeper “made the only save in a 5-4 penalty kick round to lift No. 2 Bow to a 1-0 victory,” the Monitor reported Saturday. The game story doesn’t mention the wristbands.
How the ‘XX’ Wristband Case Reached the 1st Circuit
At the 2024 game, Fellers, Anthony Foote and Rash were told to remove the wristbands or leave, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in August. A Bow police lieutenant the superintendent had arranged to have at the game then told Fellers he was being removed. The district soon issued no-trespass orders barring Fellers and Anthony Foote from its athletic and extracurricular events, the court said.
The new judgment says the district “violated Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights when it barred plaintiffs from wearing the wristbands” at that game, according to the Monitor.
McAuliffe denied the parents a preliminary injunction in April 2025, the institute said. In that ruling, he found that the district and Superintendent Marcy Kelley acted reasonably, the Monitor reported.
In August, the 1st Circuit said McAuliffe had erred, finding the parents “have established a likelihood of success as to their viewpoint discrimination claim,” the institute said. The silent protest “fell short of harassment and disruption,” the appeals court wrote, and school officials “cannot favor one side of a debate involving parental speech,” according to the institute.
New Hampshire’s Trans Athlete Law and the Supreme Court
New Hampshire’s school sports law took effect Aug. 18, 2024, and it covers grades 5 through 12. Every covered team “must be expressly designated as one of the following based on the biological sex at birth of intended participants,” the statute says.
Girls’ teams “shall not be open to students of the male sex,” it adds, and eligibility turns on a birth certificate issued at or near birth.
On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with West Virginia and Idaho in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the cases Gayety previewed in January. “Schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex,” the court’s syllabus says.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for six justices, set aside a separate question, whether schools may let transgender girls play on girls’ teams, calling it “currently the subject of litigation in some lower courts.” “Nothing in this opinion is intended to decide that question,” he wrote.
The justices hadn’t acted on an emergency request in a Washington wrestling case as of Oct. 28, Gayety reported.
Two transgender students who had challenged New Hampshire’s law in federal court dropped their case July 8, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Concord Monitor reported. Chris Erchull, a senior staff attorney at GLAD Law, said the decision to drop the case “reflects the realities facing our clients.”
