Kyle Fellers wore a pink wristband to his daughter's soccer game on September 17, 2024. The wristband had two letters on it: XX. The female chromosomal symbol. For that, the Bow School District sent a police officer to remove him from the sidelines and issued him a no-trespass order banning him from school property.
The Bow School District just wrote a check for $275,000 to settle the lawsuit it lost.
U.S. District Judge Steven J. McAuliffe judgement states that "Plaintiffs have a First Amendment right to silently wear pink wristbands bearing the XX symbol on the sidelines, in the spectator's area, or in the parking lot of any Bow District sporting event." Not in a designated "protest zone." Anywhere parents normally stand.
The case started when Fellers and Anthony Foote showed up to a Bow High School girls' varsity soccer game against Plymouth Regional. The opposing team's roster included Parker Tirrell, a biological male competing on the girls' team. The dads wore pink XX wristbands. School officials, backed by a police officer, told them to remove the wristbands or leave. They chose their First Amendment rights over their seats.
Superintendent Marcy Kelley had already made the district's position clear. Pride symbols at school events? "It's inclusionary; it's not targeting or harassing anyone," she said. Pink wristbands referencing biological sex? Banned. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saw the problem. So did Judge McAuliffe, who found what the legal system calls viewpoint discrimination — which is a polished way of saying the school picked a side and punished parents who disagreed.
During oral arguments, the district's attorney Jonathan Shirley tried an interesting analogy. "You know, poison is often determined by the dose," he told the court, comparing the parents' silent protest to something toxic. Institute for Free Speech attorney Del Kolde responded: "Your Honors, free speech is not poison."
The settlement tells the rest of the story. The district's risk pool, Primex, pays $225,000. Another $50,000 goes to attorney Richard J. Lehmann. And each plaintiff — Fellers, Foote, Nicole Foote, and grandfather Eldon Rash — receives exactly $17.91. That number isn't random. It's the year the First Amendment was ratified.
"All I did was wear a pink wristband," Fellers said. "Something I will never get back."
The timing here borders on poetic. The judgment came down November 5, the same day voters across the country were ratifying the same principle at the ballot box. Washington State passed Initiative 638 with 56% of the vote, banning biological males from girls' school sports. Nebraska's Initiative 442 passed with roughly 67% support, writing female sports protections directly into the state constitution. Arizona voters approved similar measures. Colorado's Proposition 134 led 52% to 48% with votes still being counted.
Four states. One courtroom. All reaching the same conclusion about a question the Bow School District thought it could settle with a police officer and a no-trespass order.
The district tried to argue that banning the wristbands maintained order at school events. But they never banned Pride flags. They never banned rainbow pins. They banned two letters — X and X — because those letters pointed to a biological fact the administration had decided was impolite. Judge McAuliffe's ruling says that's not how the First Amendment works. The voters in four states said the same thing, just louder.
Bow School District's legal bill for trying to silence two dads at a soccer game: $275,000. The parents' symbolic payout: $17.91 each. The year the Constitution promised this wouldn't happen.
