The U.S. Division of Training (ED) introduced Wednesday that it has decided San Jose State College violated Title IX attributable to its dealing with of a transgender former volleyball participant. The college now has 10 days to adjust to a sequence of agreements or threat “imminent enforcement motion.”
The ED launched an investigation into the college final February after a extremely publicized school volleyball season that noticed seven groups forfeit video games to SJSU amid the controversy.
Former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a number of lawsuits towards the NCAA, the Mountain West Convention and representatives of the college after alleging she had been made to share altering areas and bedrooms with trans teammate Blaire Fleming in 2023 with out being advised that Fleming is a organic male.
Former assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose was suspended and later not re-signed to a brand new contract after submitting a Title IX criticism towards the varsity for its dealing with of Fleming.
The ED has now decided SJSU denied ladies equal academic alternatives and advantages, and that the varsity retaliated towards feminine athletes who spoke out.
“SJSU brought on important hurt to feminine athletes by permitting a male to compete on the ladies’s volleyball staff—creating unfairness in competitors, compromising security, and denying ladies equal alternatives in athletics, together with scholarships and taking part in time,” ED Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey mentioned in an announcement supplied to Fox Information Digital.
“Even worse, when feminine athletes spoke out, SJSU retaliated—ignoring sex-discrimination claims whereas subjecting one feminine SJSU athlete to a Title IX criticism for allegedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete competing on a ladies’s staff. That is unacceptable. We is not going to relent till SJSU is held to account for these abuses and commits to upholding Title IX to guard future athletes from the identical indignities.”
Among the many division’s findings, it decided {that a} feminine athlete found that the trans pupil allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing staff spike her within the face throughout a match. ED claims that “SJSU didn’t examine the conspiracy, however later subjected the feminine athlete to a Title IX criticism for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in on-line movies and interviews.”
Slusser alleged in her November 2024 lawsuit towards the Mountain West that she and Batie-Smoose have been made conscious of a gathering between Fleming and Colorado State ladies’s volleyball participant Malaya Jones on Oct. 2, 2024 wherein Fleming mentioned a plan with Jones to have Slusser spiked within the face throughout a match the next night time.
The Mountain West Convention launched its personal investigation into the allegations, however decided that adequate proof couldn’t be discovered to deal disciplinary measures.
Nevertheless, Fox Information Digital reported in summer time 2025 that the Mountain West contracted the identical regulation agency to hold out that investigation that was defending the convention towards Slusser’s lawsuit which included these exact same allegations towards Fleming.
The lawyer assigned to guide the investigation was Timothy Heaphy of Willkie Farr & Gallagher (WFG). Heaphy beforehand served because the chief investigative counsel to the U.S. Home of Representatives choose committee to research the January 6 Capitol riots.
WFG later deleted an internet web page of a press launch asserting it had efficiently defended the Mountain West towards a request for a preliminary injunction that may have had Fleming dominated ineligible to finish the 2024 season and compete within the Mountain West Event.
Slusser later advised Fox Information Digital she had a dialog with a teammate who was interviewed as a part of the convention’s investigation into Fleming’s alleged plan. Fox Information Digital just isn’t disclosing the identification of the teammate.
“Based mostly on what I used to be advised, precisely what considered one of my teammates had seen go on that night time — about speaking in regards to the scouting report and leaving the web open — was advised to these legal professionals. So, that ought to have been adequate proof [of the alleged plan by Fleming],” Slusser advised Fox Information Digital, including she needs to see the investigation reopened.
“Individuals are telling you this occurred, and it’s not second-hand info. She sat there and heard the dialog between Blaire and [former Colorado State volleyball player] Malaya [Jones]. So, to me, simply from what I do know with out even having to dig deep into this investigation, there may be adequate proof, they usually have been advised adequate proof.”
Fox Information Digital can’t independently confirm that Slusser’s teammate corroborated the allegations towards Fleming when talking to investigators.
Fox Information Digital later interviewed SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya about Slusser’s claims, taking part in a video clip of Slusser reciting these allegations at Mountain West media days July 15.
“I don’t know if she’s telling the reality or not,” Konya mentioned of Slusser’s claims.
Konya couldn’t verify or deny whether or not any of the witnesses interviewed corroborated the allegations towards Fleming.
“I don’t know,” Konya mentioned.
Batie-Smoose has filed her personal lawsuit towards the Board of Trustees of the California State College (CSU) system, as SJSU is considered one of 23 California-based colleges which are a part of the system. Batie-Smoose and her lawyer Vernadette Broyles consider the suspension was “retaliatory” to her Title IX criticism over Fleming.
Batie-Smoose mentioned she wasn’t made conscious that Fleming was male till after she accepted the job at SJSU in February 2023, and claims she wasn’t formally advised the reality about Fleming till she began asking round about it, and head coach Todd Kress lastly advised her, just a few weeks into her tenure.
Batie-Smoose alleges she was then advised she couldn’t inform different gamers or gamers’ dad and mom about it.
“Todd Kress advised me in passing… as a result of I used to be asking… ‘Oh, by the way in which, Blaire is a male,’” Batie-Smoose mentioned, including that she was threatened she could be fired if she advised different athletes or dad and mom.
“Each Todd Kress and the administration, Laura Alexandra, was not allowed to speak about that, permit dad and mom to know, or anybody to know.”
In the meantime, the scenario left a lingering bodily and psychological affect on Slusser. She beforehand advised Fox Information Digital that the panic and stress from that interval in her life brought on her to develop an consuming dysfunction, which led to extreme anorexia that obtained so unhealthy she misplaced her menstrual cycle for 9 months.
“I went from round 160 to 128 [lbs] in that one semester. It positively isn’t wholesome for somebody of my dimension to be that weight, and I ended up dropping my menstrual cycle for 9 months. So it was positively extreme,” mentioned Slusser, who’s 5-foot-11.
After the 2024 season and fall semester ended, Slusser’s dad and mom noticed the bodily affect the scenario took on her, and demanded she come dwelling to Texas.
“As quickly because the season was over, she got here dwelling for Christmas, and we have been like, ‘You’re not going again,’” her father, Paul Slusser, advised Fox Information Digital. He advised his daughter, “‘You’ll be able to go get your stuff subsequent summer time when your lease is up, and keep right here.’”
As soon as winter break was over, and what was imagined to be her closing semester started, Brooke tried to finish her programs on-line.
Her dad and mom mentioned she started on-line lessons, however dropped them shortly later. As a Division I scholarship athlete, dropping the lessons resulted in her dropping the scholarship, and her household needed to pay for the total semester’s value of tuition out of pocket, and her housing.
“We needed to pay, mainly her mortgage and her condo for the remainder of the semester. So it was a fairly large monetary burden on us when that occurred,” Paul Slusser mentioned.
She is now not an SJSU pupil, and can end her training at one other faculty.
Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to result in penalties over the scenario.
The ED’s phrases of decision that SJSU should meet as a way to keep away from “imminent enforcement motion” are the next:
- Concern a public assertion to the SJSU neighborhood that SJSU will undertake biology-based definitions of the phrases ‘male’ and ‘feminine’ and acknowledge that the intercourse of a human – male or feminine – is unchangeable;
- Specify that SJSU will comply with Title IX by separating sports activities and intimate amenities based mostly on organic intercourse;
- State that SJSU is not going to delegate its obligation to adjust to Title IX to any exterior affiliation or entity and won’t contract with any entity that discriminates on the premise of intercourse;
- Restore to particular person feminine athletes all particular person athletic information and titles misappropriated by male athletes competing in ladies’s classes, and situation a customized letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to every feminine athlete for permitting her participation in athletics to be marred by intercourse discrimination; and
- Ship a customized apology to each lady who performed in SJSU’s ladies’s indoor volleyball (2022–2024), 2023 seashore volleyball, and to any lady on a staff that forfeited fairly than compete towards SJSU whereas a male pupil was on the roster—expressing honest remorse for putting feminine athletes in that place.
- In 2025, ED got here to resolutions with the College of Pennsylvania for its dealing with of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and Wagner Faculty for its dealing with of transgender fencer Redmond Sullivan. Nevertheless, it was unable to achieve agreements with state businesses in Maine and California, leading to Division lawsuits.
- In 2025, ED got here to resolutions with the College of Pennsylvania for its dealing with of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and Wagner Faculty for its dealing with of transgender fencer Redmond Sullivan. Nevertheless, it was unable to achieve agreements with state businesses in Maine and California, leading to Division lawsuits.
In 2025, ED got here to resolutions with the College of Pennsylvania for its dealing with of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and Wagner Faculty for its dealing with of transgender fencer Redmond Sullivan. Nevertheless, it was unable to achieve agreements with state businesses in Maine and California, leading to Division lawsuits.
SJSU’s response will decide the following chapter within the president’s mission to “save ladies’s sports activities.”
