Male sues college after being barred from competing in women’s track event

A male runner has filed a federal lawsuit against a New York university for blocking him from a women’s track event earlier this year.

The case hinges on a conflict between New York’s antidiscrimination law and President Donald Trump’s executive order that bars schools receiving federal funding from allowing men in women’s athletic categories.

The suit was filed Nov. 6 against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy by Sadie Schreiner, a male student who identifies as transgender.

Schreiner entered RPI’s “Under the Lights” meet in April as an unattached competitor. School officials removed him from the women’s events and informed him the university risked losing federal funding if it ignored the president’s directive. 

“RPI chose to disregard state law that identifies gender identity as a protected status,” the lawsuit says, adding the university acted “maliciously, willfully, and recklessly” when it barred him from the meet. 

RPI is a private school, but as with most colleges, it depends on federal financial aid. Trump’s order threatens those funds if universities allow men to enter women’s categories. 

Still, Schreiner argues the school should have applied state law instead, even though New York’s statute collides with federal policy. 

This is Schreiner’s second lawsuit this year over access to women’s athletics. He sued Princeton University in July under similar claims. 

In that case, his attorney Susie Cirilli defended the filing by saying, “We stand by the allegations in the pleading” and arguing the school’s actions were “intolerable in a civilized community and go beyond the possible bounds of decency.” 

Schreiner dominated women’s running fields last school year. He won every women’s event he entered, including a race where his spikes nearly slipped off mid-competition, Campus Reform reports. 

His participation has drawn serious concern from female athletes who say they are losing opportunities because schools do not enforce sex-based categories. 

One of them, former Rochester Institute of Technology student Caroline Hill, is a plaintiff in Gaines v. NCAA, a separate legal challenge seeking to remove men from women’s sports nationwide. 

“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 New York Post column. 

She added she wants “the NCAA held accountable for taking” her records “and so much else.” 

The case against RPI highlights the conflict between state-level identity policies and federal rules protecting women’s sports.