A group of 38 people who participated in 2020’s social justice protests in downtown Rochester are suing the city of Rochester, Monroe County, and numerous police officers alleging they suffered “menstrual irregularities” after being exposed to “chemical weapons.”
The complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court, claims that the protestors experienced abnormal bleeding and spotting after being exposed to PepperBalls and tear gas during daily demonstrations that occurred in early September 2020 following the release of video of Daniel Prude’s fatal encounter with Rochester police.
“For months prior to the September 2020 protests, defendants had clear notice that the use of tear gas and other chemical weapons causes damage to women’s reproductive health, including menstrual irregularities, and miscarriages,” the complaint reads.
Between Sept. 3 and 5 of 2020, officers with the Rochester Police Department fired 6,100 PepperBalls and deployed tear gas 77 times, according to data provided to WXXI by the department.
The federal complaint is nearly identical to a state lawsuit filed in 2020. Both complaints were filed by attorney Elliot Shields and include many of the same plaintiffs.
Shields said the federal complaint was filed under the belief that plaintiffs had both their state and constitutional rights violated. Shields has filed several other lawsuits against the Rochester Police Department related to officer conduct during the protests of 2020.
In one complaint, filed in 2022, a woman claimed she experienced a miscarriage after exposure to chemical irritants during a protest.
“The claim is, because the warnings are there, they should’ve known this is something we should not be using on citizens at protests,” Shields said.
In 2020, WXXI News reported on two local women who said they experienced changes in their menstrual cycles and breast milk production following their exposure to chemical agents, namely CS gas, the active compound in tear gas canisters.
“The very next day I experienced my period but it was extremely heavy and very, very painful and I had just had my period the week prior,” one of the women, Stevie Vargas, an organizer with Citizen Action New York, told WXXI News at the time.
“The pain I experienced made me unable to walk some days,” she said.
While no conclusive connection has been made between CS gas and menstrual issues, a handful of studies have shown there may be a relationship. For example, a 2021 study published in the journal BMC Public Health found that 54 percent of respondents reported abnormal menstrual cycles after being exposed to tear gas during demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, in 2020.
