Brentwood's new Spartans mascot is 'racially problematic,' discriminatory, lawsuit claims

A leader of a Suffolk County chapter of the NAACP has sued the Brentwood Union Free School District over its new sports team mascot, the Spartans, which he says is "racially problematic" and discriminatory.

The lawsuit comes as Brentwood and other Long Island school districts have chosen to drop their Native American mascots, which are banned in New York State public schools. Districts that fail to comply with the ban by June 30 could lose state aid or have school officers, such as elected board members, removed.

The Brentwood district announced last April that the community had voted for the Spartans to replace their teams’ former name, the Indians, after “an inclusive process that involved input from students, staff and the broader community,” schools superintendent Wanda Ortiz-Rivera said in a statement.

In 2023, then-Superintendent Richard Loeschner said changing from the Indians name could cost more than $400,000 but "you have to do the right thing." Native American leaders say using their images and names as sports mascots promotes racist stereotypes.

The school board voted unanimously in November to approve the new name, to take effect by the end of the 2024-25 school year.

Now the new name has sparked its own controversy.

The name Spartans refers to residents of an ancient Greek city-state whose military was known for its ferocity. 

But William King Moss III said in a lawsuit filed this month in state court in Riverhead that the Spartans were a group of white, non-Hispanic people who enslaved others and did not allow women to serve in the military.

Called 'symbol of White supremacy'

Moss, who is representing himself, described himself in the lawsuit as a Brentwood resident who is Black, Belizean American and the father of two girls who are second-grade students at a Brentwood district school. He wrote that he worked as a math teacher from 2000 until 2011 in Brentwood, where he taught units on election math. He is also president of the Islip-Smithtown branch of the NAACP, he wrote.

The team name is "a symbol of White supremacy," wrote Moss, now an official with the Lawrence school district. In addition, he wrote, his two daughters "must not be subjected to a symbol of female exclusion" from the military. The district and school board violated the state constitution and state civil rights and human rights laws by using the name, he argued.

The district declined to comment on the lawsuit. The Spartans logo has not been added to any signs or uniforms, and any outdated uniforms were replaced with items labeled "Brentwood," according to the district.

In an interview with Newsday, Moss said he filed the lawsuit to protect his daughters and other students from harmful messages about race and gender. The school board "could not possibly believe that this was the best, sound educational choice for all the students in the Brentwood community," Moss said.

Moss has filed previous state and federal lawsuits against the Brentwood school district and other defendants. Court records show that some of the cases are pending, while others ended in dismissals or the withdrawals of the suits.

Who Spartans were

In an interview, Stella Tsirka, director of the Center for Hellenic Studies at Stony Brook University, said Spartans were indeed depicted as white and they did enslave a conquered people known as Helots. And women did not serve in the military, though they had more rights than in many other ancient societies, she said.

Spartans trained together from childhood and formed powerful, tight knit groups, which could explain their appeal as sports mascots, Tsirka said.

The Brentwood district chose the name after students and other community members voted in an online survey last year. The Spartans mascot was the only one of six options with a racial connotation, Moss wrote in his lawsuit. The other choices were the Eagles, Bears, Bulldogs, Owls and Green Machine.

The district announced that the Spartans name was "the clear favorite," winning 2,079 out of 9,258 votes cast by about 6,000 students and 3,000 other community members, the lawsuit states.

That amounts to 22% of votes, Moss wrote.

Making a choice based on a plurality — that is, the largest nonmajority vote-getter — is "the worst and least effective way" to decide on a winner, Moss wrote.

He argued the district should have used a method called a Borda count, which he said is viewed as "the most accurate and efficient way" to survey a large population. The method involves letting voters rank candidates.

Many sports awards, including the Heisman Trophy and most valuable player honors, are awarded using a Borda count, said Will Mantell, a spokesman for FairVote, a nonpartisan election advocacy group. A different method, called ranked choice voting or instant runoff, is used in New York City, Maine and Alaska, he said.

With Caroline Curtin

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.