(PatriotWise.com) — Transgender Caitlyn Jenner threw her support behind an order by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to prevent transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams in county facilities, NBC News reported.
Appearing at a March 18 news conference with Blakeman in Mineola, New York, Jenner said that allowing transgender women (males who identify as female) to compete in women’s sports deprives women of the opportunities under Title IX and causes physical harm.
Jenner has been a proponent of protecting women’s sports from transgender athletes since 2021.
In the last several years, laws and regulations have been enacted in half of the US states restricting transgender students from competing in girls’ or women’s sports.
Blakeman signed an executive order last month preventing women’s sports teams that use public facilities in Nassau County from including transgender athletes.
Jenner said in a post on social media over the weekend that he was compelled to speak out about the issue to make it clear that men “don’t belong in women’s sports.” She explained that it was about “biology” and not “exclusion” or intolerance.
New York LGBT Network president David Kilmnick told NBC News that he feared that Jenner’s support for Blakeman’s order could lead to transgender youth being bullied. Kilmnick described Jenner’s opposition to transgender athletes competing against women as a “baffling contradiction,” given Jenner’s own transgender identity.
Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James have spoken against the Nassau County ban and accused the Republican County Executive of bullying transgenders.
The attorney general is challenging Blakeman’s order. On March 1, James sent Blakeman a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that the order violated New York’s anti-discrimination laws.
James described the order as “transphobic” and claimed that it would subject sports teams to “invasive questioning.”
Blakeman responded by filing a lawsuit against the attorney general, alleging that her cease-and-desist order violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
In the news conference on Monday, Blakeman told reporters that the order was not only legal but that the county had an “obligation to defend it.”
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