All Kids Deserve a Place to Belong at School

The targeting of transgender people across American institutions is chilling, but targeting young people in schools, denying them support and connection during their most vulnerable years, is especially cruel.

GLAD Law has always worked to ensure LGBTQ+ youth have access to equal educational opportunities, including a safe learning environment and a sense of belonging at school. An important place where that sense of belonging has been ripped away from many transgender young people today is school sports.

“When I was going to high school, it was really scary, because I didn’t know who I was gonna know, what it was going to be like,” says Parker Tirrell, plaintiff in our case Tirrell and Turmelle v. Edelblut. “But I had a soccer team…Having the option to [play on a team] and feeling like it’s something you’re allowed to do is helpful to make kids feel less singled out.”

Last summer, we secured a ruling on behalf of Parker and her co-plaintiff, Iris Turmelle, blocking a New Hampshire law banning all transgender girls from playing on girls’ teams in middle and high school. The court found the law discriminates based on sex, and that a blanket ban, barring every transgender girl from participation regardless of circumstances, goes far beyond the state’s claimed justification of ensuring safety and competitive fairness. The undisputed facts in the case showed that Parker and Iris pose no threat to fairness and that their participation does not increase anyone’s risk of injury.

GLAD and ACLU attorneys speak with press outside the U.S. District Court with plaintiffs Parker and Iris.
Parker, Iris, their families, and legal team

As Parker puts it: “All my teammates, my friends, everyone was always right with me saying, ‘We want to play soccer with you. We want you to be safe, and we think you deserve this too.’”

That ruling ensured that Parker and Iris have the right to try out for their high school teams while the court case continues. Then, in February 2025, the Trump administration accelerated its targeting of transgender young people with an executive order aiming to ban all transgender girls from sports nationwide. We quickly expanded Parker and Iris’s case to challenge that order, too.

Our challenge remains pending in federal court in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is set to hear two combined cases brought by students in West Virginia and Idaho who, like Parker and Iris, simply wanted to continue playing on their teams with their friends but were denied the chance because of state laws banning all transgender girls from school sports.

GLAD Law filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the cases before the Supreme Court, West Virginia v. BPJ and Little v. Hecox, arguing that these categorical bans discriminate based on sex in violation of Title IX. Our brief also lays out for the Court that, if a state’s actual purpose is to ensure school sports are fair and safe for all students – rather than discrimination against transgender girls – there are alternative approaches involving case-by-case consideration that have worked well in school districts around the country for years.

The Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in West Virginia v. BPJ and Little v. Hecox on January 13, 2026. GLAD Law filed our friend-of-the-court brief on November 17 with the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR). We were also involved in coordinating the submission of four additional briefs:

We hope the Supreme Court will strike down these harmful and cruel bans because every young person needs the chance to experience the sense of belonging that comes from being part of a team.

As Parker says: “[W]hen you’re younger, finding a place of belonging is just so hard – and taking away places where you can just forget all that, where you don’t have to think about that, just seems like a dystopian idea to me.”

This post was originally published in GLAD Law’s 2025 Winter Briefs newsletter.

Support LGBTQ+ Youth

Want to receive the latest updates on our groundbreaking cases, action alerts, and event invitations right to your email inbox? Sign up today!