A New York teacher filed a lawsuit against a Long Island school district, claiming that its new mascot, the Spartan, is “a symbol of white supremacy.”
William King Moss III, a local NAACP chapter President and father of two students, said the Brentwood Union Free School District’s choice of the Spartan as its new mascot is offensive to both women and Indigenous people.
Moss, who filed the lawsuit on March 26, said the Spartan is “a symbol of hate” and is “racially problematic” because its origin is of an ethnically white warrior class who conquered and enslaved people such as the “indigenous people called the Helots.”
“Spartans are of the identifiable and generally perceived protected classes of White Non-Hispanic in race, White in color, Greek in National Origin, and Spartan or Greek in Ethnicity,” the complaint states.
Moss suggested that the Spartan mascot is offensive to women since the “ancient Spartans did not allow females to be soldiers in the military.”
The school district began its search for a new mascot last April to replace its previous mascot, the Indians, in response to a New York law prohibiting school districts from adopting indigenous or tribal themes as mascots without permission from indigenous leaders.
Following a student-faculty vote, the school selected the Spartans in November. Moss threatened at a school board meeting in December that the decision to choose a mascot based on a White ethnic group would lead him to file a lawsuit.
HERE ARE THE LAWSUITS TARGETING TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDERS
The school district superintendent said it would cost more than $400,000 to change the district’s mascot.
The Brentwood Union Free School District declined the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.