NBA confirms its first nonbinary and transgender referee

The NBA confirmed Tuesday that Che Flores is the league’s first nonbinary transgender referee.

A second-year staff referee, Flores’s identity was first published by GQ on Monday, according to an NBA news release.

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“One piece I was missing for myself was that no one knew how I identified,” Flores said in an interview. “Being misgendered as she/her always just felt like a little jab in the gut.”

“I can go through the world and even my job a lot more comfortably.”

Several executives within the NBA have been aware of how Flores identifies, according to the report, and many more of the referee’s colleagues were made aware when Flores announced it during preseason meetings.

“Flores has worked games for about a decade in both the G League and the WNBA,” the release read.

“They have been previously picked to work some of the biggest events in basketball — the G League Finals, the WNBA Finals and the NCAA women’s national championship game.”

Flores hopes younger children can be inspired by seeing greater representation within the NBA.

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“I just think of having younger queer kids look at somebody who’s on a high-profile stage and not using it,” Flores said.

“And I’m not using the league to an advantage in any way. This is just to let young kids know that we can exist, we can be successful in all different ways.”