Man sues Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute after being barred from women’s track meet
A male runner is suing Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for blocking him from women’s events under Trump’s executive order.
The lawsuit highlights a conflict between New York discrimination law and new federal restrictions on permitting men to compete in women’s categories.
A male student named Sadie Schreiner has brought a discrimination lawsuit against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a private university in Troy, New York, for prohibiting him from competing in women’s running categories.
The Nov. 6 lawsuit highlights a divergence between New York’s discrimination laws, which have protections for “transgender-identifying” individuals, and President Donald Trump’s January executive order, prohibiting universities from allowing men to compete in women’s categories, and threatening loss of federal funding for non-compliance.
Schreiner’s lawsuit against RPI accuses the university of choosing to uphold the president’s executive order over the state’s discrimination laws.
In April, the school hosted a track meet called “Under the Lights,” which Schreiner registered for as an unattached athlete. The university prevented him from competing, citing President Trump’s executive order.
“RPI chose to disregard state law that identifies gender identity as a protected status,” the lawsuit says. “RPI proceeded to discriminate against Sadie citing Executive Order 14201 and their fear of the Department of Education.”
The university was “aware that Sadie was a transgender woman and maliciously, willfully, and recklessly discriminated against Sadie Schreiner on the basis of her gender identity and expression.”
This is the second lawsuit Schreiner has filed against a university this year, over being prohibited from competing in women’s categories. Schreiner sued Princeton University in July, citing the state’s anti-discrimination laws protecting transgender-identifying people.
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“We stand by the allegations in the pleading,” Schreiner’s attorney Susie Cirilli said at the time. “As stated in the complaint, the defendants’ individual actions were intolerable in a civilized community and go beyond the possible bounds of decency.”
As Campus Reform reported in February, Schreiner has won every women’s running category he has competed in this year, including a race where his spikes almost fell off.
Caroline Hill, a former student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where Schreiner is also a student, announced that she is one of the plaintiffs in Gaines v. NCAA, a lawsuit demanding that the NCAA ban men from women’s categories.
“For violating the federal rights of women, and for abandoning us so openly, the NCAA must pay a price so high that no school or organization will ever dare to do such a thing again,” Hill wrote in a piece for The New York Post.
“We need the law, and the consequences for breaking it, to be certain and clear. I deserve my records back, and I want the NCAA held accountable for taking them — and so much else — from me,” she continued.
Campus Reform contacted Sadie Schreiner’s legal counsel and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
