Albany Retreats on One Piece of Its Native Mascot Ban

Massapequa's long fight over its Chiefs name has produced a partial concession from Albany. State education officials plan to stop telling districts to police what their own employees wear, though New York's broader ban on Native team imagery in schools will remain.

The shift surfaced Oct. 19 in court papers in the Long Island districts' lawsuits, now pending at the Second Circuit in Manhattan. The filings say the Regents intend to repeal Section 123.5, the staff provision of their mascot rules. A State Education Department spokesperson said the agency would advise the Regents to "leave decisions regarding employee clothing, including apparel displaying offensive Indigenous imagery, to local school districts."

Massapequa's school board treated the news as a win. "From the beginning, we have maintained that the Native American mascot ban is an unconstitutional overreach," the board's statement said. In the same statement it urged the governor to scrap the whole regulation.

Albany's campaign against these mascots is a quarter century old. Commissioner Richard Mills wrote to school boards in 2001 that Native mascots could stand in the way of a safe school climate, and he asked them to drop the names "as soon as practical." Dozens of districts never did.

The turning point came from a district upstate. Cambridge Central School voted in 2021 to retire its "Indians" name, then flipped. The commissioner overruled that reversal, and in June 2022 a state judge in Albany County sided with him.

Officials treated the Cambridge decision as binding on everyone. That November, Senior Deputy Commissioner James Baldwin sent districts a memo. Any district still holding on to Native imagery without a tribe's blessing, he wrote, had until the 2022-23 school year ended to promise a replacement. The stakes were spelled out: state aid could be withheld and school officers could be removed, because holding out could count as a willful breach of the Dignity Act, the 2010 law that guards students against harassment and bias.

A formal rule followed. The Regents floated Part 123 in December 2022, took public comment for 60 days and approved it the next spring, with an effective date of May 3, 2023. Officials cited the Dignity Act and research tying such mascots to harm for Native students and to stereotyping.

Under Part 123, a public school may not use any Native mascot, logo or team name, though teachers can still discuss them in class. Every board had to adopt a resolution promising to retire its imagery, and to finish the job by the close of the 2024-25 school year at the latest. Teams of tribal members are exempt, as is any school whose tribal deal was signed in writing before the rule began.

Section 123.5 is the clause now on the chopping block. It made districts responsible for making sure staff, officers included, did not display or promote retired imagery at district events or anywhere on school grounds. Staff who are themselves tribal members could still do so. As first drafted, the clause covered "all individuals" on school grounds. After objections, officials narrowed it to employees, explaining that they mainly wanted to stop districts from parading "retired" mascots at games. Every other provision stays.

Massapequa sued. Its Chiefs, the district says, go back to about 1925 and the opening of its first school, and the image is meant to be Tackapausha, a Massapequa sachem.

The first suit was dismissed in March 2025, when a federal judge held that a district generally cannot take the state that created it to court over such claims. A second judge on the same court dismissed renewed claims in November 2025 filed by Massapequa, its school board and the Native American Guardians Association. That group had struck a deal with Massapequa over the Chiefs name. Only board member Jeanine Caramore was allowed to keep going, on First Amendment claims she brought as an individual. Massapequa's appeal is before the Second Circuit, where arguments are expected early next month.

The Trump administration lined up behind the district. Acting on a complaint from the guardians group, the U.S. Education Department's civil rights office began looking into the state on April 25, 2025. Its finding came on May 30, delivered by Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a visit to the Chiefs' home high school. In her department's view, singling out Native names while leaving others alone, such as the "Dutchmen" and "Huguenots," amounted to discrimination that Title VI, part of the landmark 1964 civil rights law, forbids. Federal officials wanted the ban rescinded and an apology sent to tribes. New York said no, and on June 17, 2025, the case went to the Justice Department.