The case was called Tirrell v. Edelblut. Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, two biological males competing on girls' sports teams in New Hampshire, filed it back in 2024. They wanted a federal court to tell New Hampshire that biology doesn't matter and that state law couldn't keep them off women's teams.
They just dropped it. Voluntarily. No settlement, no deal — just a quiet withdrawal after the Supreme Court made clear they had no legal ground left to stand on.
The dismissal came in the wake of a recent SCOTUS decision that gutted the legal framework the plaintiffs were relying on. That ruling, combined with President Trump's executive order titled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" and New Hampshire's own statute banning biological males from female athletic teams, left the case with nowhere to go. The suit had already been amended once in 2025 after the executive order dropped, and Tirrell's family had actually moved out of New Hampshire entirely.
Jonathan Scruggs, Senior Counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, didn't mince words. "Women and girls deserve privacy, safety, and equal opportunities," Scruggs said. "That can't happen when males are competing in women's sports, taking spots on women's athletic teams, and winning women's championships."
Scruggs added: "President Trump's executive orders and New Hampshire's law recognize common sense and track Title IX, the federal law that ensures equal opportunities for women in athletics. We are grateful this case is coming to an end and that New Hampshire is free to protect its female athletes."
New Hampshire's law doesn't stop at sports. The state also banned gender-affirming therapy for minors under 18. The legislature looked at what was happening across the country — biological males taking roster spots, winning championships, sharing locker rooms — and drew a line.
Turmelle's mother called the law an "erasure" of her son. Tirrell said the political climate meant playing on a girls' soccer team "wasn't just about the game anymore." At one point during the case, a judge wrote that "XX" wristbands worn by spectators "can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women." Wristbands referencing chromosomes — an assault.
That's the legal theory that just collapsed. The argument was never really about fairness in athletics. It was about redefining who gets to compete and under what terms, using courts to override what legislatures enacted and what voters supported. When SCOTUS weighed in and the executive branch backed up the law, the whole structure buckled.
Title IX was written in 1972 to give women equal opportunities in education and athletics. For fifty years it meant biological sex. The attempt to rewrite it to mean something else required sympathetic courts, favorable administrations, and public confusion.
Two out of three just disappeared.
