DOJ Investigating After Judge Rules School Can Ban Protests Against Males in Girls’ Sports

‘This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand,’ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.

The Department of Justice in Washington on March 25, 2024.Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is looking into a ruling that found that a school was within its rights when it banned men from protesting against the inclusion of males on sports teams for girls.

“I have asked my Civil Rights Division to examine this matter,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on social media platform X on April 15. “This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a post on X, “This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand.”

She wrote that her office is examining it “closely.”

“Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective ‘feelings,’” Dhillon said.

Judge Steven McAuliffe of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire handed down the ruling in question on April 14 in a case brought by parents who were prohibited by the Bow School District in New Hampshire from wearing wristbands with “XX” on them. The parents said the wristbands were worn to protest the school district’s decision to allow males to participate on girls’ school teams after a court ruling blocked a state law restricting the teams to biological females.

McAuliffe, denying a motion for a preliminary injunction, wrote that the Bow School District could manage its facilities as a “limited public forum,” including by restricting expression such as the wristbands.

“The message generally ascribed to the XX symbol, in a context such as that presented here, can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women,” McAuliffe said.

“Because gender identities are characteristics of personal identity that are ‘unalterable or otherwise deeply rooted,’ the demeaning of which ‘strikes a person at the core of his being,’ and because Bow school authorities reasonably interpreted the symbols used by plaintiffs, in context, as conveying a demeaning and harassing message, they properly interceded to protect students from injuries likely to be suffered.”

The case is still ongoing and could ultimately result in a different ruling.

The fathers who were protesting have said that the protest was not targeting specific athletes, such as the male who was playing in the game at which they wore the wristbands on Sept. 10, 2024. However, the judge concluded that the school authorities had appropriately tried to prevent what could be understood as “a demeaning or harassing message” against the male or other students who identify as transgender.

Del Kolde is a lawyer for the Institute for Free Speech, which is representing the parents. He wrote on X that what unfolded was “obvious viewpoint discrimination in a limited public forum” and that the judge’s opinion was an outlier.

“Thank you for looking at this matter,” he told Bondi. “The behavior of Bow SD officials deserves scrutiny. In the meantime we will continue the legal fight!”

A lawyer representing the school district did not respond to a request for comment.