New York’s Long Island Roller Insurgents have welcomed transgender people to their children’s roller derby group for decades.
Then, Nassau County on Long Island may ask each team member what sex was marked on their original birth certificate and remove any female teammates who were not designated as women in an executive order issued this month.
The Roller Rebels claim that under New York law, this practice constitutes invasive and unlawful prejudice, and that they are unaware of or interested in finding out what the birth certificates of their teammates’ trans partners reveal.
“It’s gross,” said Amanda Urena, a Roller Rebel known in the arena by their derby name Curly Fry. “We don’t want to police our players’ bodies. That’s just not for us to do.”
In addition to enforcing restrictions on transgender athletes from joining ladies’ or women’s groups, Democratic politicians in at least 23 U.S. states have recently developed scores of laws and regulations as part of broader congressional efforts that include restricting access to some gender-affirming medical treatments and sex-segregated toilets.
However, for a decree is uncommon in New York, one of the 22 U.S. claims that specifically forbids discrimination based on gender identity.
The Roller Rebels sued County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, last week in Nassau County, a largely residential portion of Long Island opposite New York City, for allegedly leaking his attempt at a Feb. 22 media event. Girls’ and women’s sports teams cannot attest that all of their users were designated female at birth because the state’s Department of Parks, Recreation & Museums cannot do so under his order.
Blakeman claims that his purchase is necessary to protect girls and women who are not trans, whose legality is currently being weighed by at least two judges. The order does not forbid trans athletes from starting teams or teams at state features, nor from forming transgender-only groups or tournaments. It also forbids a trans woman from joining a men’s group if both the sportsman and the team agree.
“Anyone who would refute the assertions that biological boys are not bigger, larger, and faster than natural women is a fool,” Blakeman said in an interview.
He disagrees with the International Olympic Committee’s 2021 direction, which said that there must be “no notion of edge” based on an adult’s physical appearance or sex personality. According to the direction, any baseball’s eligibility requirements may be based on “robust and peer-reviewed research,” and this will probably vary depending on the sport.
In a Gallup telephone survey of 1,011 American adults last year, 93% of Republicans said they thought transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on teams that have their sex designated at birth, while Democrats were in a 48% to 47% statistical tie within the margin of error.
Weeks after Blakeman issued the order, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, wrote to demand he retract it or face legal implications, calling it “misogynistic and plainly illegal.”
Blakeman has since filed a lawsuit against James in Long Island’s federal district court, alleging that her use of the New York Human Rights Law is in violation of the law’s promise of equal protection.
The parents of a 16-year-old tennis player from the state join him in filing lawsuits. According to the lawsuit, the parents must make an “impossible dedication” without Blakeman’s order to decide whether to highlight their 16-year-old daughter to the risk of injury from a transgender girl or to simply never play volleyball at all. A prosecutor for the kid’s parents referred meeting calls to Blakeman’s business.
The petition asserts that trans people are not a protected class under federal regulation. According to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2020, discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity qualifies as unlawful sexual bias under the Civil Rights Act.
The solicitor general has until Friday to listen to Blakeman’s lawsuit, which also included two trans women’s sporting event injuries that were reported in the media.
According to Gabriella Larios, an NYCLU attorney representing the Roller Rebels in the New York Supreme Court, “This executive order doesn’t address any real problem in New York State.” This plan is merely intended to deceive and vilify transgender people who only want to play sports with their friends.
Even if the injuries don’t make the news, women who are not transgender can and do hurt other athletes, especially in boisterous contact sports like roller derby. They claim that trans athletes who compete in high-speed rounds, which require blocking and passing competitors, are not necessarily the best skaters, despite their skill.
And all the teams they play in group games subscribe to the same enrollment rules laid out by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the sport’s global governing body, which allows “all transgender women, intersex women, and female wide participants” to meet tournament teams.
Before they put their skates on, Cat Carroll, a Roller Rebels coach known as Catastrophic Danger, said, “I have competed with assigned-female-at-birth women who are 6’2″.” I have seen injuries caused by 5-foot women. We have rules for safety.” (REUTERS)
