Shifting political demographics are playing out in swimming pools.

Currently, controversy at a New York City High School is pitting woman’s religious rights against the city school board’s policy of gender inclusivity.

At issue is the recent cancellation of female-only swim hours at Stuyvesant High School, which is home to a large percentage of Muslim students (by some estimates, 10 percent).

One of the city’s most elite public high schools, Stuyvesant High School mandates a one-semester swim class to be completed by the end of students’ sophomore year. In the past, some of the girls who have taken the course have opted for the allgirls section, citing religious beliefs dictating modesty.

This semester, however, the school eliminated the all-girls classes in favor of coed ones, putting the high school at the center of a debate on how to balance religious accommodations and women’s rights with social integration and gender inclusivity.

The issue came to the fore after Stuyvesant student Sophia Dasser published an opinion piece about the policy change in the school newspaper. According to Dasser, who is Muslim, administrators said it had become unfeasible to fit the classes into the schedules. Brian Moran, Assistant Principal of School Safety & Security & Physical Education, told Dasser that the girls’ swim gym was removed because “it created a major issue, mostly with programming.” Numerous girls were requesting it, and Moran said the school was becoming overloaded with girls-only swim sections, which clashed with other classes.

It is not clear if the girls-only classes were also removed because they were in conflict with the New York City Department of Education gender inclusion guidelines, which mandate that schools may not separate students by gender for physical education classes except for contact sports.

To accommodate religious diversity, the school was considering a vetting process for Muslim students, which could include a note from religious leaders to verify that the girls truly needed the girls-only swim section.

Ultimately, however, it appears that the school decided to scrap the program altogether, and what remains is a swim class requirement that is strictly coed.

Many of the high school’s girls are furious about the cancellation, feeling that they are being forced to choose between their faith or their Stuyvesant diploma.

The girls have been advised to simply wear modest bathing suits, but many are uncomfortable with this option. Many Muslim women “do not go to the beach or mixed swimming areas despite the availability of modest swimwear because it’s often not modest enough, especially after swimming,” Dasser wrote in the school’s newspaper.

Furthermore, she argued, “It shouldn’t matter whether I’m Muslim, Jewish, Christian, if I personally do not feel comfortable.”

Dasser says a call to action to change the school’s policy is crucial.

“Whether you are one of the demographics affected by this change or not, I implore you to reach out to Principal Yu and other administrators to call for change about this decision,” she wrote. “The girls-only swim gym cohort is not a frivolous accommodation for Muslim girls but rather a necessity. If we are expected to take Swim Gym to earn our diplomas, it is an administrative responsibility to make sure that requirement can be met by everyone.”

It seems likely she will be able to rally her troops.

That’s because Stuyvesant High School is far from alone as it confronts how to negotiate religious requirements surrounding sexual segregation.

Last September, Muslim women at Syracuse University successfully won their battle for swim time without men in the college pool.

And after weeks of student protests led by Yale’s Muslim Student Association, Orthodox Jews, and others, the university has finally agreed to offer single-gender dorms and bathrooms. But as laws move toward perceiving gender as more fluid, these types of skirmishes are likely to become more heated, and the Muslim position with respect to modesty is already affecting politics. Because when it comes to identity politics, the Islamic faith makes no allowances — sexual modesty is a core value.

Indeed, they say that politics makes strange bedfellows, and that sure seems to be the case as Muslims are increasingly joining evangelical Christians on the Republican ticket after concluding that the Democratic party is trampling traditional Islamic values.

According to exit polls from the Wall Street Journal, 28 percent of Muslims voted Republican in 2022, an increase of 11 percent over 2018.