A flood of public comments has prompted the state Board of Regents to hold off on a new regulation that would allow more gender neutral sports teams in the state’s high schools.

Earlier this year the Board of Regents started the comment process for a new regulation that will end the state’s current fitness test requirements for mixed competition. There was a 60-day public comment period, after which the Board of Regents was expected to approve the change.

That didn’t happen.

When the Board of Regents met Monday, the mixed sports team regulation was not listed on the agenda. A spokesman for the state Education Department confirmed to the Journal News that the vote had been tabled, pending further review of a flood of public comments on the proposal.

If a school does not provide opportunity for students of different genders to participate on separate teams, schools must permit a student of a different gender to participate in however a team is selected.

The expectations for personal and social responsibility, health, physical fitness, and sport-specific skill development and knowledge of the game requirements must be the same for students of all genders. The proposed amendment requires that criteria for determining whether students will be selected to participate on the team shall be the same for all students who wish to participate, regardless of student-identified gender. Those criteria will be required to be publicly posted on the school website. If there is no selection process employed for participation in a particular sport, all students must be permitted to participate equally, regardless of self-identified gender.

“We’re clear in the amendments that it’s student-identified gender,” Angelique Johnson-Dingle, deputy state commissioner of P-12 instructional support, said during the May Board of Regents meeting. “We worked very hard to be very clear in that language and to be as inclusive as possible. So that is what we’ve done with the language throughout.”

The change is being spurred by the case of Shira Mandelzis, a 2023 graduate of Riverdale High School in the Bronx who argues the old physical tests she had to pass before playing high school football required her to do more to prove her ability to play contact sports than boys who had never played football and who were similar in physical stature. Mandelzis had to do a mile run, do the required number of pull-ups and push-ups and be able to touch her toes. Then, she had to pass the Tanner Test, which evaluates young athletes’ level of bone growth, hormonal changes and muscle development that their body has gone through or still needs to go through. The state Education Department recommends eliminating use of the Tanner scale because it is intrusive and demeaning, according to the staff memo on the new regulations.

Instead of the Tanner scale, the Education Department recommends that schools use other ways to determine if an athlete is likely to be injured during contact sports, including age, kinematics/biomechanics, body composition, previous injury; grade of competition; training load (hours per week); position played; competition or practice; strength; player experience; whether the sport includes checking, tackling or body contact; and environmental factors.