San Jose State transgender volleyball controversy
2024 controversy in American volleyball
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 2024 San Jose State transgender volleyball controversy is an ongoing collegiate athletics dispute that emerged after a longtime player for the San Jose State Spartans women's volleyball team was outed as a trans woman.
The controversy subsequently became fuel for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and led to several lawsuits, protests, losses of athletic opportunities for other trans athletes, and punitive measures imposed upon San Jose State University after Trump assumed his second term.
Background
Blaire Fleming
Blaire Fleming (born February 17,2002) was a volleyball player for the San Jose State Spartans in California, with her role being as an outside hitter meant to deliver spikes that opponents couldn't return (known as "kills").[1] Her athletic performance was described as "middle of the pack" and "good, but unremarkable and unremarked-upon". She grew up in Virginia, and transitioned socially and medically at the age of 14; before playing girls' volleyball in high school.[2][3]
After drawing the attention of college recruiters, Fleming was up front with all the colleges she visited about being transgender, and eventually accepted a scholarship to play volleyball for the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers in South Carolina beginning in 2020. However, after not fitting in by the end of her freshman year, she withdrew and returned home to Virginia to train with her old club, before accepting a scholarship from San Jose State University (SJSU) in 2022; and while she told the Coach Trent Kersten that she was trans, she decided this time to wait until she knew her teammates better to tell them individually. A few players, however, had reportedly found out from staff that Fleming was transgender, leading to occasional rumors.[2][1][4][3]
Brooke Slusser
Brooke Slusser (born January 9,2003) was another volleyball player at SJSU, who had transferred to the school in 2023 from the University of Alabama. Prior to that, she had been an All-American high school volleyball player in Denton, Texas, and had grown up in a Christian conservative household, with her biggest dream in life being to have children. In need of a place to live after transferring, she was recommended by Coach Todd Kress to move into an apartment with a group of three other players on the women's volleyball team, one of whom was Fleming. The four quickly formed a close friend group, often throwing parties together; and Slusser and Fleming quickly reached the point where Slusser would share deep personal secrets with Fleming, and the two would regularly share a room when going to play away games.[2][3]
Legal environment
While restrictions imposed on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) by the second Trump administration have since banned trans women from women's sports, at the time Fleming played, it was still allowed under a 2011 NCAA policy for trans women to compete in women's sporting events provided they completed one year of testosterone suppression.[5] This became more strict however in the early 2020s amid the rise of the anti-trans movement, with the criteria for trans women participation becoming stricter and stricter amidst the rise of figures like Riley Gaines. As of December 2024, there were "less than 10" transgender athletes out of the NCAA's 500,000, according to NCAA President Charlie Baker.[2]
At the time, transgender women still received non-discrimination protections under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, however those protections allowed for exceptions to be made in the case of sports participation.[5][2]
Initial incident
In 2024, a few months before Fleming's fourth season, an article by the far-right news outlet Reduxx was published outing Fleming as a trans woman, having pulled old Facebook photographs of Fleming and comments by Fleming's grandmother calling her a "grandson". This article was published following a tip by the mother of a girl that played against Fleming, who had told the publication that she'd suspected Fleming of being transgender.[2][4][3][6]
Right-wing media was quick to pick up on the story, with the Fox-owned Outkick running more than 50 articles on the controversy over the course of the season, and before long it was turned into an epicenter for national news coverage.[2] Slusser made several appearances on Fox News. Amidst the national chaos, Slusser and the other roommates threw a party celebrating Fleming moving out of the apartment.[2][3]
According to Slusser, the stress of the incident caused her to develop anorexia, and she ceased having a menstrual cycle for nine months. When asked about this by Fox News, Fleming replied that Slusser had been anorexic for the entire time that they'd known each other, and would keep track of her weight on a whiteboard in her room. Slusser later recovered thanks to, according to her father, "regular prayer".[3]
Lawsuits
A class action lawsuit was filed [when?] by a group of cisgender female athletes led by Riley Gaines and the anti-trans sports organization ICONS - formed after one of the co-founders watched her daughter lose to trans swimmer Lia Thomas - against the NCAA, claiming that by allowing a transgender woman to participate in sports, the NCAA had violated their rights under Title IX. Slusser joined the lawsuit in the fall of 2024, on the grounds that "If I had a daughter one day, that was in my position and I never did anything about it and could have, then I wouldn't have been able to live with myself".[2][7][8][5][9][10][11][4]
A second lawsuit was filed [when?] as well by Slusser against the California State University System, the Mountain West Conference, and the SJSU women's volleyball coach, seeking to have Fleming declared ineligible to participate in order to end her participation in the season early and vacate the Spartans' wins. This suit was joined by the Spartans' assistant coach, Melissa Batie-Smoose, who took personal discomfort with having a trans player on the team, and who later accused Fleming of colluding with players from Colorado State University.[2][1][12][13][14][15] Magistrate Judge Kato Crews ruled that Fleming was allowed to play, and a federal appeals court upheld the decision the following day.[4][16]
Protests
In a four-page letter to the presidents of the other Mountain West schools, ICONS demanded that their teams refuse to play against SJSU in order to "protect" their athletes. Shortly thereafter, five universities consisting of the Boise State Broncos, Wyoming Cowgirls, Utah State Aggies, Nevada Wolf Pack, and Southern Utah Thunderbirds, forfeited their women's volleyball games against SJSU in protest. Riley Gaines went around awarding "medals of courage" and "BOYcott" t-shirts to some of the athletes on teams that had forfeited.[2][16][4][17][18]
Games in which SJSU did play were beset by rallies and protests against Fleming's participation as well, to the point where the team soon needed armed police escort to maintain their security.[2][4]
San Jose State ended the 2024 season with a 14–7 record and after Boise State declined to play them in the conference semifinal, advanced on a bye to the conference final,[19] where they were defeated by the Colorado State Rams.[20][21][22] Of the team's 12 regular season conference wins, six were by forfeit. In December 2024, seven team members entered the NCAA transfer portal.[23]
Trump campaign
Following the campaign against her, Fleming's performance delivering spikes grew substantially in both strength and accuracy, leading up to a video in which Fleming delivered a spike which struck an opposing player in the arm.[4][1] The player, Keira Herron, later told The New York Times that "The ball didn't hurt" and "Everyone gets hit in volleyball". Nevertheless, the Donald Trump presidential campaign seized on this, with Trump himself using it to promote bans on trans women from women's sports.[2][17]
Aftermath
Both Slusser and Fleming finished their final year of school remotely, while other transgender athletes reported their schools revoking opportunities for advancement or participation because, as one put it, "No school wants to be the next San Jose State". SJSU assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose was dismissed from SJSU and filed a lawsuit claiming improper dismissal.[2]
Department of Education investigation
When Trump took office in January 2025, he quickly signed into effect Executive Order 14201, entitled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" which subsequently forced the NCAA to announce in February that it was banning all trans women from women's competitions, effective immediately.[2] In February 2025, the Department of Education (ED) announced that it was investigating San Jose State for allowing Fleming to be on the team.[24]
In January 2026, the ED ruled that SJSU had violated Title IX and engaged in sex discrimination by allowing Fleming to play, and threatened "imminent enforcement action" if the university did not agree to adopt a definition of "male" and "female" solely defined by assigned sex at birth, segregate sports and intimate facilities according to said definition, agree not to contract with any entity that might violate Title IX in a similar way, restore to cis female athletes any awards potentially given to a transgender athlete over them and issue a personalized letter of apology to each one, and send a personalized apology letter to every woman that played in SJSU women's volleyball from 2022 to 2024.[25]
In March 2026, San Jose State University and the California State University system refused the ED's demands and announced they would be suing the federal government to rescind the ruling and prevent punitive action from being taken against the university.[26][27][28]
