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A New York appeals court has frozen a Long Island county’s ban on transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at county-owned facilities, despite a judge upholding it days earlier.
Despite the roadblock, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, vowed to move forward with the law, which passed in June 2024.
“Nassau County will continue to protect the integrity and safety of women’s sports,” Blakeman told the New York Post.
Blakeman is a former commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and his brother served on former President George W. Bush’s staff. He defeated Democratic incumbent Laura Curran in the 2021 election and took office the following New Year’s Day.
Last week, Judge R. Bruce Cozzens wrote that Nassau County’s ban is designed “to protect women and girls” and that transgender athletes can still play in coed sports leagues at the county’s facilities. However, an appeals court barred the county from enforcing the ban.
The law was introduced by Blakeman as an executive order in February 2024 but was struck down after a lawsuit filed by the Long Island Roller Rebels, a roller derby league on Long Island whose president, Amanda “Curly Fry” Urena, competes and is transgender. The county’s Republican-controlled Legislature then passed a law containing the ban, which the league argued violated state anti-discrimination laws.
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The state Appellate Division, in its decision, said that making the women’s roller derby league coed would “change the identity of the league,” jeopardizing not only its status with the sport’s governing body but also its ability to grow its membership and find teams to compete against.
Urena said players were “thrilled” the higher court saw through Nassau County’s “transphobic and cruel ban.”
Gabriella Larios, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling “made it crystal clear that any attempt to ban trans women and girls from sports is prohibited by our state’s antidiscrimination laws.”
Blakeman’s ban would affect more than 100 sports facilities in the county.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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