ALBANY (TNS) — The state Education Department has offered to ban all school mascots that are connected to any racial or ethnic group, in response to an effort from the federal government to overturn the ban on mascots depicting Indigenous Peoples.

The state made that offer in a letter to the U.S. Office of Civil Rights, which last week ordered the state to drop its ban.

In the letter, Counsel and Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley said the Office of Civil Rights argued that the mascot ban was improper because other mascots, like the Dutchmen, were still allowed. Guilderland High School’s teams compete as the Dutchmen and the Lady Dutchmen.

“This presupposes that it is permissible to eradicate harmful stereotypes used as school mascots so long as the regulatory scope is sufficiently broad,” Morton-Bentley said.

He offered to “prohibit all mascots that are ‘derived from or connected to [any] racial or ethnic groups used by schools and districts in the state of New York.'”

“I look forward to meeting with you to discuss how to support all students by eradicating harmful mascots,” he wrote.

It’s not clear whether the state Board of Regents would actually enact such a sweeping ban, but Morton-Bentley’s response did make the point that New York state does not intend to back down from its mascot ban.

The Office of Civil Rights said last week that New York’s ban on mascots referencing Indigenous Peoples was discriminatory because it “allowed names, mascots, and logos that appear to have been derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the ‘Dutchmen’ and the ‘Huguenots.'” It gave New York 10 days to end the ban.

“The Trump administration will not stand idly by as state leaders attempt to eliminate the history and culture of Native American tribes,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement. “Rather than focus on learning outcomes, the New York Department of Education and Board of Regents has set its sights on erasing Massapequa’s history — while turning a blind eye to other districts’ mascots that are derived from or connected to other racial or ethnic groups.”

Massapequa, a school district on Long Island, sued the state over the mascot ban. The case was dismissed, but last month the district filed an amended lawsuit. The state Education Department had warned that the district could lose state funding if it did not stop using its “Chiefs” mascot by this month.

The Salamanca school district’s “Warriors” mascot is exempt from the state’s ban due to the number of Seneca Nation of Indians member families, who live in the Allegany Territory of the Senecas, in the district.

Just before the deadline, on May 30, hope for the district came when McMahon visited the district in person. There, she announced that the federal government would support Massapequa’s fight to keep its mascot.

Meanwhile, 17 local school districts have been choosing new mascots. Most have already replaced Warriors, Indians, Raiders and the like with animals, including wolves, bears and at least four different types of hawks. Niskayuna and Shenendehowa chose their school names and nicknames, Nisky and Shen.

Several districts were reluctant to give up their mascots, particularly Mohonasen, Niskayuna and Shenendehowa. But none of them decided, in the end, to sue the state.

Still, some school officials admitted they were watching the Massapequa case closely. When it was dismissed, the last few districts began choosing new monikers.

In the letter to the Office of Civil Rights, Morton-Bentley noted that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York had already considered whether the mascot ban was acceptable.

“In denying relief to several school districts (including the Massapequa Union Free School District), the court acknowledged NYSED’s substantial public interest in ‘furthering a discrimination- and harassment-free learning environment in all of New York’s public schools’ and held that ‘the balance of hardships tip[ped] decidedly in [NYSED’s] favor,'” Morton-Bentley wrote.

He added that the Office of Civil Rights should have taken that into account.

“OCR is not a court of last resort for unsuccessful litigants,” he wrote.

If the office were to take him up on his proposed ban of all mascots connected to racial or ethnic groups, it’s not clear what that would include.

The Office of Civil Rights cited Dutchmen, which refers to people from Holland, and Huguenots, who were French Protestants.

The state Education Department held that any mascot of Indigenous Peoples was unacceptable, as well as anything associated, such as tomahawks. A ban on mascots referring to ethnicity could affect the Argyle Scots and Scotia-Glenville Tartans, both of which refer to people from Scotland.

The state Education Department spokesman did not answer a question seeking clarity on that point.

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