San Francisco: Players Sue Gay Softball League For Sexual Discrimination

In August 2008, a team from San Francisco was disqualified from the gay softball World Series in Seattle for having too many straight players on the team. The rules stipulated that no more than two players on a team may be straight. Now three of the players from the disqualified team are suing the league for sexual discrimination.

In a rare instance of an LGBT legal advocacy group suing a gay organization, the National Center for Lesbian Rights on Tuesday filed suit on behalf of the players in U.S. district court for the western district of Washington. According to the complaint, NCLR alleges that the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAAA) broke state public accommodations law by enforcing a discriminatory rule that only two heterosexuals can play on each team. NCLR further claims that during the 2008 Gay Softball World Series in Seattle, NAGAAA officials interrogated the three plaintiffs, whom a competing team had suspected of being straight, about their sexual orientation. All three have asserted that they are bisexual.

The league asserts that they are a private organization and therefore not subject to the law. One of the suing players reports that he was snappily told, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”