A Nevada state lawmaker is denying claims that her staffers trashed letters written by women who support a state bill that would ban a transgender athlete from playing in girls’ sports.
State lawmakers are considering several bills to ban athletes who identify as female from playing on girls’ and women’s teams in Nevada, and women who support the bills have taken their concerns to their lawmakers, including Assemblymember Elaine Marzola, a Democrat from Clark County.
However, 13-year-old Ava Chavez is claiming that Marzola’s staffers destroyed her letter to the lawmaker in which she expressed her support for the transgender athlete bans. The girl was spurred to her position after being forced to play against a boy who was permitted to join a girls’ team.
“When the ball is on the other side of the net, they have a chance to swing and we have a chance to block. This can be dangerous for us because if the blockers can’t block the boy’s hit, I could get dangerously hurt. This scares me because boys are naturally bigger, faster, stronger and have a higher vertical,” the girl said in her letter to the lawmaker, according to Fox News. “Please support SB112 to protect girls like me who love sports. Thank you for reading my letter!”
But the girl told Fox News that when she delivered her letter to Marzola’s office, she received a very rude reception.
Chavez added that when she delivered her letter, Marzola’s staffer threw it in the trash.
“When I walked in, she took my paper between her fingers and she was like sliding it into the trash can.” She also said she put copies of the letter on the representative’s desk, too.
“And then when I walked out, I thought I heard rustling papers again, and I was like, ‘Oh she just threw out our papers again,’” she said.
Kendall Lewis, 17, backed up Chavez’s claims and said her letter was also trashed by Marzola’s staffer.
“As she took them from us, she kind of crumpled them a little bit, not completely like into a ball, but just kind of threw them away and just disregarded them,” Lewis said.
A third woman, University of Nevada volleyball player Sia Liilii, also said she witnessed the destruction of the letters.
“After hearing the rustling papers, I looked back and Kendall said, ‘she just threw it away,’” Liilii told Fox News.
Marzola, though, denies that her staffer destroyed the letters of constituents.
“The allegations against my staff and I are a blatant lie perpetrated by an unserious opinion columnist who wasn’t even in the legislative building. My staff and I always treat everyone with the utmost respect and dignity. Because I was in meetings all afternoon, I didn’t interact with Ms. Chavez (Ava’s mother Annie Chavez) or her daughter, so they must be mistaken,” the lawmaker’s office said in a statement.
However, despite her protestations, Marzola offered no proof that her office still has the letters.
“She wasn’t in the site of what had happened and the fact that she wants to come after the character of girls who were just there to give their letters peacefully and give her letters saying why they love sports so much and why they want it to be single-sex spaces, it’s kind of questionable, especially since she gets to make decisions for how we gets to play our her sports,” Liilii said in reply to Marzola’s denials.
The two bills currently being debated in the Nevada Legislature are AB240 and SB112.
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