Ohio senator reintroduces legislation inspired by local student-athlete

TOLEDO, Ohio — After she was disqualified for wearing her hijab during a cross-country meet in the fall of 2019, Noor Abukaram set out to create change.

A year and a half later, she's been featured in national publications like Sports Illustrated, spurring a conversation about discrimination in sports.

"All that national attention really just showed me how valid my feelings were and all of a sudden my unique circumstance became a really common reality for a lot of athletes," Abukaram said.

And it's an issue she's still facing despite the Ohio High School Athletic Association changing the rule following the incident to no longer require a waiver for religious headwear.

"My most recent encounter really just shows why it's important to get this bill passed because even though they tried to make some rule changes, you can still see that officials try to implement discriminatory policies because they were in place before."

This week, Ohio Sen. Theresa Gavarone reintroduced Senate Bill 181, inspired by Abukaram, to protect freedom of religious expression for athletes.

The legislation passed unanimously in the last General Assembly, but invalidated with the new year when lawmakers ran out of time due to pandemic delays.

"You're talking about kids, these high school kids have worked so hard that I got upset and I wanted to do something about it to make sure no student has to go through that again," Gavarone said.

Abukaram is fighting to do the same with her initiative called "Let Noor Run" that she launched early last year following the incident.

She recently hosted a virtual 5K to raise money to add sport hijabs to athletic departments in Toledo schools.

"Especially when a hijabi athlete comes through and you give them their uniform or whatever, but you also give them a hijab and it shows inclusivity in the sports, you know, that we do know that you're an athlete here and that you can be a face of athletics at our school," Abukaram said.

NBC 24 reached out to the OHSAA to see if there have or will be anymore uniform policy rule changes for religious headwear, but did not hear back.

RELATED: 'Let Noor Run' campaign launches Friday night, trying to defeat discrimination in sports