Youth Sports

Questions about who should be allowed to compete in school sports in New Hampshire played out before a federal judge and the body that sets eligibility rules this week.

“We don't want you supporting our girls the way you are,” Alex Zerba, a parent of a girls varsity soccer player, said of the protests.

Judge Landya McCafferty wrote that the law likely violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it is “impossible to classify by transgender status without classifying by sex or gender.”

The school board chair says the district determined the new law contradicts other state and federal provisions, like Title IX.

The law, which took effect Aug. 19, is facing a federal court challenge.

Plaintiffs in the case are seeking a broader ruling in the coming weeks that pauses the law for all student athletes.

The new law will allow NH judges to ban people from athletic competitions if they’ve been convicted of assault, harassment, stalking, mischief, reckless conduct or threatening involving a sports official on the field of play or immediate vicinity.

It's been a week since Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill that bans trans girls in middle and high school from playing on girls’ sports teams.

He also vetoed a bill that would have allowed businesses and government entities to discriminate on the basis of biological sex.

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has not indicated his position on the bill.