NYCLU asks court to overturn Nassau County’s ban on trans sports

The New York Civil Liberties Union argued Tuesday that a judge should strike down a ban on transgender women and girls playing sports in Nassau County.

The civil rights group brought its case in court more than 10 weeks after Nassau County passed the ban banning transgender women and girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity at about 100 county-operated facilities.

The NYCLU has asked Nassau County Superior Court Judge Francis Ricigliano to issue an order freezing the ban as the litigation continues.

In March, the civil rights group sued Nassau County, saying the ban violated state law. The NYCLU filed the complaint on behalf of a women’s roller derby league in Nassau County.

The lawsuit says the league, the Long Island Roller Rebels, has at least one member who could be barred from playing because of the ban. The complaint says the ban was enacted “in light of clear legal protections, regulations and guidelines” that prevent discrimination based on gender identity in publicly operated sports facilities.

The lawsuit cited a 2019 state law, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which, according to its provisions, prohibits “discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression” in public spaces.

The Democratic state representative who authored the 2019 law, Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal of Manhattan, has sided with the NYCLU.

“It’s very clear,” he said by phone Tuesday. “You cannot discriminate against New Yorkers – whether adults or children – based on their gender identity or gender expression.”

Nassau County, which unsuccessfully tried to move the case to federal court, has asked the state court to dismiss the lawsuit. The District has argued in court documents that the ban is supported by protections for women enshrined in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In recent decades, federal courts have sometimes applied the clause—to a limited extent—to issues of gender discrimination. The 14th Amendment, a broad Reconstruction-era amendment aimed at preventing racial discrimination, requires that no state “shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Nassau County Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman said he issued his ban to prevent transgender women and girls from gaining an unfair competitive advantage in sports. He was hard-pressed to cite an example of such a problem cropping up in his county, but he portrayed the ban as a preventive measure.

He said the district wants to “stay ahead of the curve.”

In a lawsuit filed in April, Nassau County suggested that federal protections should apply to “biological” women in sports and that those protections should replace competing protections for transgender women in state law.

“To the extent that these sections of New York State law unfairly and unequally provide transgender women with the opportunity to compete and excel while discriminating against and denying equal opportunities to physiologically different biological women,” it says in the complaint, “they are in irreconcilable conflict with the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Constitution.”

Gabriella Larios, a NYCLU attorney who led the lawsuit, said in an interview Tuesday that the argument is not one “that other courts around the country have adopted” and that a federal court in a separate case found that the district had not proven that lifting the ban would violate the equal treatment clause.

In the federal case, Nassau County sued Attorney General Letitia James to prevent her from filing a lawsuit over the ban.

A federal judge dismissed the case last month. Judge Nusrat Choudhury wrote that the county’s claims relying on equal protection rights for women and girls were “unconvincing.”

James, a Democrat, has not sued Nassau County. However, she called the ban “transphobic and blatantly illegal.”

In recent years, Republicans have pursued transgender bans in athletics, portraying them as efforts to preserve fairness in competition. Democrats say the measures are cruel and potentially dangerous for transgender youth, who report alarmingly high rates of depression.