MASSAPEQUA, N.Y. (AP) — New York is discriminating against a school district that is refusing a state order to get rid of its Native American chief mascot, President Donald Trump’s top education official said Friday.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said on a visit to Massapequa High School on Long Island that a weekslong investigation by her agency has determined that state education officials are violating federal civil rights law and could face a Justice Department investigation or risk losing federal funding.
McMahon didn’t elaborate on the finding but said her department will be asking the state to voluntarily sign a resolution apologizing to Massapequa and allowing it and other districts in the state to continue using the mascot of their choosing.
If the state refuses, the former longtime CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment said her department could turn the case over the Justice Department.
“That’s how serious we are,” said McMahon, who made the announcement alongside local officials, students and community members in the high school gymnasium following a tour of the campus.
Spokespersons for the state education department didn’t immediately comment.
Trump ordered the federal education department, which he has moved to dismantle, to launch an inquiry into the dispute last month. The move has made the coastal suburb an unlikely flashpoint in the enduring debate over the place of Indigenous imagery in American sports.
Massapequa, which is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Manhattan, has for years fought a state mandate to retire Native American sports names and mascots.
But its lawsuit challenging the state’s 2023 ban on constitutional grounds was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this year.
State education officials, who have been trying to remove offending mascots and team names for more than two decades, gave districts until the end of this school year to commit to replacing them or risk losing education funding.
Schools could be exempt from the mandate if they gained approval from a local Native American tribe, but Massapequa never sought such permission, state officials have said.
Residents who support keeping the mascot have argued the image has been a part of the community’s identity for generations and is meant to honor its Native American past.
The town is named after the Massapequa, who were part of the broader Lenape, or Delaware people who inhabited the woodlands of the Northeastern U.S. and Canada for thousands of years before being decimated by European colonization.
“Forcing them to change the name, after all of these years, is ridiculous and, in actuality, an affront to our great Indian population,” Trump wrote in a recent social media post calling for a federal investigation.
But indigenous residents on Long Island and elsewhere in New York have called Massapequa’s mascot problematic as it depicts a Native American man wearing a headdress that was typically worn by tribes in the American Midwest, but not in the Northeast.
The cheery mascot also obscures Massapequa’s legacy of violence against Native Americans, which includes the site of a massacre in which scores of Native men, women and children were killed by Europeans in the 1600s, Native American activists have said.
Massapequa, which is roughly 90% white, has long been a conservative bastion popular with New York City police and firefighters.
Trump visited the town last year to attend the wake of a New York City police officer and has made frequent visits to Long Island as it has shifted Republican.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Hollywood’s Baldwin brothers and the Long Island’s alleged Gilgo Beach serial killer are also among Massapequa High’s notable alums.
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
