NEWYou can now listen to Pakinomist articles!
An appeal in New York has frozen a Long Island county’s ban on transient athletes from competing in women’s sports at county -owned facilities, despite a judge maintaining that days earlier.
Despite the roadblocking, Nassau County -Operating Bruce Blakeman, a Republican, promised to move forward with the law passing in June 2024.
“Nassau County will continue to protect the integrity and security of women’s sports,” Blakeman told the New York Post.
CLICK HERE for more sports cover at Foxnews.com
Nassau County -Operating Bruce Blakeman signs an executive order showing the county’s support for federal, state and local law enforcement by allowing masks for specific investigations in Nassau County on July 11, 2025 in Minola, New York. (Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
Blakeman is a former Commissioner of the Port Authority in New York and New Jersey, and his brother served on former President George W. Bush’s staff. He defeated Democratic present Laura Curran in the 2021 election and took up 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 transnry athletes can still play in coed sport leagues at the county’s facilities. However, an appeal right prevented the county from enforcing the ban.
The law was introduced by Blakeman as an executive order in February 2024, but was beaten after a trial filed by 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 claimed violated the state’s anti-discrimination legislation.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman speaks to the crowd under his State of the County address held at Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building in Mineola, New York on March 6, 2024. (Steve Pfost/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
Brewers Player Ripped to Avoid Hit-by-Pitch that would have tied games: ‘All he had to do was stand there’
The State Appeals Department said in its decision that making the women’s roller Derby League Coed would “change the league’s identity”, at risk 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 “enthusiastic,” which the higher court saw through Nassau County’s “Transfobe and Cruel Prohibition.”
Gabriella Larios, a lawyer at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the decision “made it crystal clear that any attempt to ban trans women and girls from sports is banned in our state’s anti -discrimination legislation.”
US President Donald Trump joins Bruce Blakeman, County Director of Nassau County, New York, after arriving at Republic Airport at Air Force One on September 26, 2025 in Farmingdale, New York. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Blakeman’s ban would affect more than 100 sports facilities in the county.
