Manhattan, New York’s largest school board district, has launched a new resolution banning female-identifying transgender students from playing in girls’ sports, despite opposition from city council members and even actor Elliot Page.
Community Education Council District 2, which controls schools from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Upper East Side, passed the policy in a lopsided 8-3 vote on Wednesday, the New York Post reported.
Elliot Page attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022, in Beverly Hills, California. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
The vote was held at the end of a packed meeting during which pro-transgender activists and city officials argued against the ban.
NYC Council member Erik Bottcher spoke against the policy, calling the proposal “regressive” and “harmful.”
“We are outraged that you’re considering a resolution targeting transgender girls and sports. It is utterly shocking that such a regressive and harmful resolution is being proposed in the school district in the middle of Manhattan,” Bottcher tailed.
NYC Councilmember Erik Bottcher is seen speaking to Holy Apostles volunteers. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and NYC Councilmember Erik Bottcher visited Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen and Pantry in Chelsea to express their support for their noble cause. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Despite all the hand-wringing, though, the measure is primarily symbolic as all it does is request the state’s Department of Education to review the current policy allowing trans athletes to compete in female sports.
The purpose of the measure is to change state education policy in this matter to allow parental input. The district also wants the DOE to reveal how it is making its decisions and to institute a new level of transparency so that local district officials and parents can see how decisions are made.
CEC member Maud Maron said the measure was not “transphobic” but meant to spark a discussion about safety and fairness in women’s sports.
“If we have a proper and real conversation, one of the outcomes could be that nothing changes and that we all discover that these guidelines are just perfect as they are,” Maron said during Wednesday’s meeting.
She added that the final discussion could go the other way too. She said, “But another one of the possibilities is that we realize that the excluded voices had something really important to offer, and they should have been heard from in the beginning.”
CEC councilmember Gavin Healy, who opposed the measure, said that such a ban would force female athletes to prove their gender and that, he said, would be too “invasive.”
Counter-protestors gathered to support transgender swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 17th, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“If you want to force students to prove their biological sex in order to participate in a sport, you are asking an invasive, a deeply intimate question about someone that they should not have to answer,” Healy said.
“And what is next, the bathroom, health care? It’s putting a target on students’ backs, and so I will definitely vote against it, and I’m just ashamed to be up here tonight and having to debate this with you,” he added.
CEC D2 president Leonard Silverman, though, praised the passing of the measure as a strike in favor of local control and transparency.
“Unfortunately, my experience has been that organizations, including the community education councils, are sometimes created to give the appearance that parents have control over the process when the reality is, that we really don’t have any control,” he said. Silverman also contended that transgender athletes likely have a biological advantage and pose risk to a “level playing field” for girls.
The vote marks the second time in less than a month that officials in New York have spoken out to ban transgender players from competing as girls. Officials in Nassau County, New York, also recently voted to ban men competing as women in girls’ sports.
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