Two public pools in Brooklyn will continue to offer women-only swimming hours, following a ruling by the city that it doesn’t constitute gender discrimination, News 1 reported.
The Commission on Human Rights reviewed the legality of separate swimming sessions intended to accommodate Orthodox Jewish women who otherwise would not use the pools, and decided to grant the exceptions.
The commission ruled that the Metropolitan Pool in Williamsburg and the St. John’s Recreation Center in Crown Heights will continue to offer limited hours once or twice a week, so Orthodox Jewish women may enjoy the pools without compromising their religious standards, which forbid bathing with men.
In man-on-the-street interviews, one New Yorker told News 1, “I’m kind of all for having a certain time in the day for women to swim and a certain time for men to swim and then another time for everybody to swim.”
But another New Yorker, less charitable, said, “They probably should get their own pool instead of making other people have to separate what is a public environment.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union called the ruling unfair. “It has all the earmarks of a religious exemption,” the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union told the New York Times. “People have every right to go swimming in a gender-segregated environment pursuant to their religious beliefs, but not on the taxpayer dime.”
However, the Parks department said in a statement that the women-only hours also accommodate women who have a “history of domestic violence or abuse, history of sexual violence or abuse, body-consciousness concerns.”