Transgender sports ban challenged in Nassau County federal lawsuit case

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.

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Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman signs an executive order showing the county’s support for federal, state, and local law enforcement officials by allowing masks for specific investigations in Nassau County on July 11, 2025, in Mineola, New York.  (Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

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.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman speaks to the crowd during his State of the County address held at the Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building in Mineola, New York on March 6, 2024. (Steve Pfost/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

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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.”

U.S. President Donald Trump walks with Bruce Blakeman, County Executive of Nassau County, New York, after arriving at the Republic Airport on Air Force One on Sep. 26, 2025, in Farmingdale, New York. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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Blakeman’s ban would affect more than 100 sports facilities in the county.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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