Kyle Fellers missed half his daughter’s senior-year soccer games after a dispute over a pink wristband. Two years later, Bow School District has a federal judgment declaring that it violated the parents’ First Amendment rights, plus a settlement providing $275,000 in legal fees and costs.
The wristbands carried two letters: XX. Apparently, defending girls’ sports required parents to defend their right to wear something smaller than the average school identification badge.
From KSAT:
In a dismissal order Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe said the men have a First Amendment right to silently wear the wristbands and that school officials violated it. Under a settlement agreement, the district’s risk pool will pay $225,000 to the Institute for Free Speech, which represented the men in court, and $50,000 to the men's attorney. The plaintiffs will each get $17.91, an amount that symbolizes the year states ratified the First Amendment.
Fellers said he missed half of his daughter’s soccer games during her senior year because he stood up for what he believes in. The wristbands were marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes.
“It took more than two years, but the court has recognized that what happened to us was wrong,” he said in a statement.
On November 5, U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe entered a stipulated declaratory judgment recognizing the plaintiffs’ right to wear the wristbands silently along the sidelines, in spectator areas, and in parking lots at Bow District sporting events. The order expressly declares that the district violated their rights at the Sept. 17, 2024, girls’ varsity soccer game.
The dispute began when parents opposed a biological male’s participation on the visiting girls’ team. Kyle Fellers, Anthony Foote, and grandfather Eldon Rash wore the bands as a passive protest. Officials demanded their removal. Fellers and Foote later received no-trespass orders. Nicole Foote joined the lawsuit to protect future expression.
School officials argued that they were protecting a student from harassment. Before the game, administrators had heard concerns about possible heckling and had received confrontational messages about boys playing in girls’ sports.
The First Circuit examined those circumstances and still concluded in August that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their viewpoint-discrimination claim.
The court found that the passive protest didn’t amount to harassment or disruption. It also identified evidence that officials objected to the message itself; Superintendent Marcy Kelley described XX as exclusionary, while Principal Matt Fisk characterized the symbol as hateful and anti-trans.
Pffft!
Administrators had a responsibility to maintain order. Their authority didn’t include deciding that support for female-only sports was too offensive for spectators to express. Treating a political objection as a disciplinary problem gives officials an awfully convenient way to avoid hearing it.
Consider what the parents had chosen. They could make their position visible without interrupting play or shouting at anyone. A school that can distinguish a foul from a fair tackle should be able to distinguish a wristband from harassment. Officials instead turned a quiet statement into a federal case.
The settlement’s financial terms are precise. Primex, the district’s risk pool, will pay $225,000 to the Institute for Free Speech and $50,000 to the plaintiffs’ other counsel. Each of the four plaintiffs receives $17.91, a symbolic reference to the year the First Amendment was ratified.
The agreement generally disclaims liability except as expressly stated in the stipulated judgment. The judgment declares the district violated the Constitution. Claims against the individual administrators were dismissed; the agreement doesn’t require them personally to fund the legal payment.
Parents should remember the human cost alongside the financial one. A daughter’s senior season happens once. Litigation establishes a right and secure payment for legal work, but it can’t replay the games a father missed.
School boards should ask how decisions made in the name of protecting students led parents to lose access to school events. They should examine the policies, training, and supervision that allowed disagreement to become grounds for exclusion. A settlement ends a lawsuit; responsible oversight should examine how the lawsuit became necessary.
The judgment binds the district and its successors, and changing school policies won’t erase its protection. Bow can revise its handbook, but these families’ right to wear their wristbands remains.
The lesson should reach beyond Bow: officials can’t make agreement with their preferred position a condition of watching a child’s game.
Parents went to a soccer field to support their daughters and express a belief. After two years of litigation, the district must respect their right to do both.