San Jose State is facing a lawsuit over transgender volleyball fire

On November 15, 2024By Pranco

The San Jose State University women’s volleyball team is at the center of a new legal action against transgender women competing in women’s college sports.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by team co-captain Brooke Slusser and others seeks an injunction barring San Jose State from allowing a player who Slusser has identified as transgender to participate in the Mountain West Conference championship of November 27 to 30 in Las Vegas. The lawsuit also seeks to prohibit the conference from allowing the player to participate in the championship.

Slusser – the one earlier this season joined a class action lawsuit against the NCAA over its rules allowing certain transgender women to play women’s sports — and two former Spartans filed a lawsuit against San Jose State’s women’s volleyball coach, two school officials, the California State University system and the NCAA’s Mountain West Conference.

The lawsuit accuses coach Todd Kress, senior associate athletic director Laura Alexander, senior director of media relations Michelle Smith McDonald and other defendants, including Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, of manipulating conference rules, reducing women’s sports opportunities, spreading inaccurate information, using their positions to ‘cool and suppress speech with which they disagree’. It also accuses them of punishing dozens of female volleyball athletes “for taking a public stand for their right to compete in a separate sporting category, all in a concerted effort to stamp out the debate over women’s rights in sports.”

In an emailed statement, San Jose State said it received a copy of the 132-page lawsuit late Wednesday afternoon and would not comment on its claims.

The conference said it prioritizes the interests of its athletes and takes great care to comply with NCAA and conference policies.

“We take all concerns regarding the well-being and fairness of students and athletes seriously,” the conference said in an emailed statement.

This news organization is not calling the player who Slusser and others identified as transgender, as the player has not confirmed this.

The lawsuit adds more fuel to the American debate over the participation of transgender women in women’s sports. Like the lawsuit against the NCAA, it is funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, an advocacy group co-founded by former All-American Stanford tennis player Kim Jones.

The furor over the player’s presence on the team has generated national headlines and led to four college teams forfeiting games against San Jose State in protest, with two more forfeits pending.

Slusser is joined in the lawsuit by former Spartan volleyball players Alyssa Sugai and Elle Patterson, San Jose State head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, and eight players from the four schools that forfeited games against the Spartans: Nevada; State of Utah; Wyoming; and Boise State.

The new lawsuit repeats many of the allegations raised in the earlier lawsuit by Slusser, who transferred to San Jose State in 2023 and joined the volleyball team on a scholarship and, according to the lawsuit, was unaware for months that a player she was playing with had lived and stayed during road trips was transgender.

The new legal action includes additional allegations that San Jose State officials tried to silence anyone who questioned the transgender player’s presence on the team. Kress “dismissed Slusser” when she told him that the player’s participation in the practice “would put everyone on the team at risk of serious injury,” the lawsuit said.

Kress no longer talks to or coaches Slusser and tries to kick her off the team, and became “increasingly hostile” toward Slusser, Batie-Smoose and other players who supported Slusser or were concerned about the player’s presence on the team, the lawsuit alleged.

Late last month, Batie-Smoose filed a federal Title IX discrimination complaint against San Jose State, the conference and the NCAA “regarding her concerns about discrimination against women,” according to the lawsuit. Four days later, about 90 minutes before the Spartans were to play New Mexico, a San Jose State official blocked Batie-Smoose from entering the Spartan gym and told her she was suspended indefinitely and must leave campus immediately, the lawsuit alleged.

The complaint alleges that two other Spartan players, Sugai and Patterson, were denied scholarships because the transgender player received one instead.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and injunctions banning what it claims are male players from women’s NCAA sports. The NCAA aligns its rules with USA Volleyball, which states that transfemale players’ testosterone levels “must not exceed the upper limit of the normal female reference range for their age group.”

Currently, thanks in part to six forfeit wins, the Spartans sit second in the Mountain West standings with a conference record of 11-5. The forfeits are counted as wins for the Spartans in Mountain West play, but the NCAA considers them “no contests” for purposes of tournament eligibility.

The Spartans have played 18 games so far and are scheduled to play a 19th against Colorado State on Saturday, reaching the required total to qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

It is not clear at this time whether Wyoming, Boise State, Utah State and Nevada, the four Mountain West teams that have forfeited games against San Jose State, would do so in a potential conference tournament matchup.

Bay Area News Group sports reporter Christian Babcock contributed to this story.

Originally published: November 14, 2024 at 6:20 PM PST