North Carolina bathroom bill becomes issue for SUNY swimmers

Mar 8, 2019

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New York’s stand for LGBTQ bathroom rights in North Carolina is being felt by some SUNY student athletes.

The good news for the 13 swimmers and divers is that they qualified for the national Division III swimming and diving championships.

The bad news is the meet is in Greensboro, N.C., and New York bars unnecessary travel to the state. The athletes from three SUNY schools â€“ Geneseo, Brockport and Cortland â€“ are being allowed to attend the meet, but they cannot fly into or stay in hotels in North Carolina.

That means most will fly into Roanoke, Va., and stay in a hotel about an hour’s drive from the aquatics center. They will have no place to rest each day between preliminaries in the morning and finals in the evening, unless they drive back to the hotel 50 miles away. The meet takes place March 20-23.

And that did not sit well with state Sen. Patrick Gallivan, R- Elma, when he heard about it.Â His district includes Geneseo.

“Besides being stupid, there’s no doubt it puts them at a competitive disadvantage,” he said.

Competition at this level is tight, and in an event like the 50-yard freestyle, the difference between first place and 20th place is fractions of a second.

Gallivan is calling on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to reconsider his executive order and allow the students to stay in North Carolina to fully participate in the event.

North Carolina passed the bill in 2016 that required people at government-operated facilities to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, which would not allow a transgender person to use the restroom of the gender he or she identifies and lives as.

After the bill passed, a number of companies said they would not do business in the state, other states banned travel to North Carolina, and the NCAA pulled its championships out of the state. A year later, the state legislature repealed the controversial bill, but it also prevented local governments from passing non-discrimination laws on bathroom access until 2020. The new bill has been challenged in court for discriminating against the LGBTQ community.

Cuomo’s executive order bars publicly funded or publicly sponsored travel to North Carolina. SUNY schools do not foot the bill for attending the championships, but are reimbursed for airfare, hotels and food by the NCAA, according to Gallivan and one of the coaches.

But the governor is holding to the ban.