The U.S. Department of Justice will look into a Bow case after a federal judge sided with the local school district in a dispute over free speech and transgender athlete participation in school sports, according to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe ruled against parents in Bow who wanted to wear pink wristbands emblazoned with “XX” to protest the participation of transgender girls on girls’ sports teams during the current spring season. The symbol typically references the sex chromosomes associated with biological females. 

Bow School District issued the parents no-trespass orders last fall. McAuliffe said the district had been “entirely reasonable” in its interpretation of the “XX” symbol on the wristbands as bearing a message that might “poison the educational atmosphere.”

Bondi responded to Monday’s court ruling yesterday evening on social media.

“I have asked my @CivilRights Division to examine this matter. This DOJ stands with women and their supportive parents,” she posted on X.

Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, echoed the sentiment in a separate post.

“This ruling is unconstitutional and will not stand,” Dhillon wrote on X. “Every father has not only a right but also a duty to stand up for his daughters, and the right to free speech is not curtailed by subjective ‘feelings.’”

Attorneys representing the parents in the lawsuit expressed support for the Justice Department’s review.

Del Kolde, an attorney with the Institute for Free Speech, the firm that brought the lawsuit on the parents’ behalf, said they feel encouraged by the attention the case is receiving at the federal level.

“We don't have any insight into what the US DOJ is doing, but we welcome any scrutiny into what is going on at Bow SD,” Kolde wrote in a statement to the Monitor. “We continue to believe that school officials violated our clients' civil rights and we intend to continue the legal fight.”

At the center of the legal battle are parents Anthony and Nicole Foote and Kyle Fellers, who sued the Bow School District after they were barred from wearing the pink wristbands after a game last fall.

The wristbands were intended to silently protest against the inclusion of transgender girls on girls’ sports teams, the parents said in court.

“I’m confident that once they’ve reviewed the ruling, they’ll recognize it as a narrow decision focused solely on protecting students from harassment by adults on school grounds,” wrote Brian Cullen, the attorney representing the Bow School District, in a statement to the Monitor regarding the Department of Justice’s interest in the case.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Sruthi Gopalakrishnan can be reached at sgopalakrishnan@cmonitor.com