At 6 feet 4 inches before even lacing up her skates, Jack Sawula towered over most of her teammates at a recent practice of the Long Island Roller Rebels, a women’s roller derby team in suburban Nassau County.
The roller derby team, which competes throughout the Northeast, has long been a haven for L.G.B.T.Q. athletes. As in past seasons, it has several transgender members, including Ms. Sawula, who blocks opponents while wearing a hot-pink helmet and matching mouth guard.
But in July, the county enacted a ban on transgender athletes participating in women’s sports at county-owned sites, a move that County Executive Bruce Blakeman says protects girls and women against bigger, stronger athletes. He calls the measure a matter of common sense and says it has broad support.
But the ban has shaken the Roller Rebels’s sense of security and, members argue, violates their civil rights. So this season there are new faces on the sidelines: a team of civil rights advocates from the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The Roller Rebels formed an alliance with the legal group, which since March has filed two lawsuits opposing the ban. The squad has emerged as an unanticipated foil to Mr. Blakeman, a Republican ally of former President Donald J. Trump.
Karlen Velkovska, 33, a blocker known as Biscuits, called the ban “professional legislational bullying.”
“People are fired up,” she said. “The roller derby community nationally has rallied around us. You don’t get to come into our community and push us around.”
In the Rebels, the civil liberties lawyers have made common cause with a group of amateur athletes who take on noms de guerre and engage in bruising tilts on an oval track. The object of the sport is to block the opposing team’s key player, the jammer, from scoring points by passing the pack. Meanwhile, you speed your own jammer to victory.
Techniques include the hip whip (slingshotting forward by grabbing a teammate’s hips) and the mighty J-block (in which a player explodes from below to jam a shoulder into an opponent’s chest).
The team says it used county facilities occasionally in previous years to supplement its use of private rinks for practices and matches. Because of limited availability at the private venues, it had planned to use county facilities more often this year to allow for monthly contests and expanded practices. The ban, the team argues, will prevent that.
Mr. Blakeman’s measure has garnered him plenty of airtime on Fox News, as well as support from Republican constituents, and national figures like Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic athlete who is transgender and has been a conservative voice against trans athletes in women’s competitions.
But Mr. Blakeman says that support for the measure is not limited to his own party.
“People come up to me and tell me, ‘It’s not a partisan or a Republican or Democratic issue,’” Mr. Blakeman said. “People of all parties, especially lesbians, are very supportive.”
A May survey by Siena College showed that 53 percent of Long Islanders polled supported the measure. Among Democrats, the figure was 30 percent; Republicans, 82 percent; and independents, 52 percent.
But Ms. Sawula, 27, called the ban cruel to a team that welcomed her in 2022 with no qualms or questions. After the ban, she said, “being one of the only trans women on the team, it’s isolating and scary.”
When Mr. Blakeman instituted the rule, the team’s outcry on social media caught the attention of Civil Liberties Union, which approached it to offer representation in a lawsuit. The group deploys an array of legal and media resources for clients, and it has put out news releases, a video and group photographs for the Roller Rebels. The team has begun selling “Skate Past Hate” merchandise to raise money.
As the lawyers pursue their case, they appear acutely aware of tensions surrounding the issue. At the recent practice, a lawyer and press liaison allowed a reporter to speak to select members of the team in interviews they monitored, saying it was because of the sensitive nature of the continuing legal matter.
After Mr. Blakeman tried to use an executive order to implement the ban in February, the derby team won a ruling that he lacked that authority. Then in June, the Republican-controlled County Legislature voted along party lines to enact the bill. Mr. Blakeman signed it into law in July.
Now, the team and its newfound backers have filed another suit in state court, arguing that the ban violates New York human rights and civil rights laws against discrimination based on gender identity.
Mr. Blakeman said in an interview that he was confident the ban would be upheld, adding, “It’s fairness, it’s integrity and it’s safety.”
Nassau County, which has 1.4 million residents, skews slightly Democratic among registered voters, but Mr. Blakeman got elected in 2021 by taking a tough-on-crime stance and challenging Democrats on issues like bail reform, immigration and mask mandates.
In March, he began recruiting residents with gun permits as special deputy sheriffs, for what he called an added layer of protection during emergencies. Critics said he was creating his own militia. And this month, he signed a bill banning masks from being worn in public.
Then there’s the transgender ban. “I’m approached constantly by people who have concerns, and you don’t wait until someone’s punched in the nose or seriously injured to take action,” Mr. Blakeman said.
But the New York Civil Liberties Union’s executive director, Donna Lieberman, said Mr. Blakeman’s transgender law “has nothing to do with safety — it has everything to do with bias and hate.”
At a recent practice at a strip-mall rink in Seaford, about a half-hour drive from New York City, some two dozen Rebels suited up next to a snack bar and flashing arcade games. Then the players — blockers, jammers and pivots — began drills.
Ms. Sawula, whose derby name is Bratzilla, said that as a bullied boy, she had shied from sports. She has quickly established herself as one of the Roller Rebels’ strongest skaters, but she resisted the idea that transgender women enjoy a dangerous physical advantage.
“There are players on the team who are much better than me, faster, can hit harder, are just better at the sport than I am,” she said.
Cat Carroll, 47, a player-coach known as Catastrophic Danger, said that the sport’s rules against dirty play protect all players — and that there are cisgender female skaters “who are 6-1 before they put on skates, and they look like Valkyries.”
The Rebels, which formed nearly 20 years ago, twice submitted requests this year to use county rinks, as they have in prior years, but did not receive permits.
Amanda Urena, 32, the team’s president, who identifies as nonbinary and transgender, said the Rebels play at two private rinks and have faced chilly receptions trying to get other spaces. The county ban would require the team to intrude upon members’ privacy by asking them the sex on their birth certificates, Mx. Urena said, which contradicts the policies of their international governing body, the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.
In recent years, more than 20 states have passed laws restricting transgender athletes from playing school sports on teams that do not match their assigned sex at birth. Nassau County’s ban does not apply to school fields, which are outside the county government’s jurisdiction, but extends to adults.
One supporter is Colleen Brennan, whose two daughters play high school and club sports.
“I’m not transphobic — one of my good friends, her daughter has transitioned to male, so whatever makes you happy, live your life — but I think it’s a question of fairness in competition,” she said. “There are true biological differences in speed and strength, it’s a fact.”
Chuck Moeller, 55, of Glen Cove, who has four children, said he took a nuanced stance.
“In contact sports where people might get hurt, I don’t object to common-sense applications — maybe you measure muscle mass,” he said. But, he added, “this notion that you have an army of amped-up transgender kids taking over sports and invading locker rooms, or even a trans athlete taking over a game, I’m just not seeing that.”
As for the Roller Rebels, members said that they did not seek the political spotlight and mainly looked forward to focusing on their skating — and improving their record of 1-2 this season.
“We’re just here to play a game,” Mx. Urena said.
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