San Jose State University’s Blaire Fleming, circled, sends female opponent tumbling to the ground with a ferocious spike. (Credit: The Daily Mail)
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced it has determined San Jose State University (SJSU) violated Title IX in the handling of a transgender former volleyball player.
OCR concluded that SJSU’s policies allowing males to compete in women’s sports and access female-only facilities deny women equal educational opportunities and benefits.
The Gateway Pundit reported that SJSU faced eight-game forfeitures by opposing teams during their 2024 season because biological male Blaire Fleming plays for the University’s women’s volleyball team.
During a match between San Jose State and San Diego State, the 6-foot-1 Fleming rocketed a spike off the face of San Diego State’s Keira Herron. The young woman immediately fell to the floor.
A lawsuit was ultimately filed against the Mountain West, alleging that allowing Fleming to play at San Jose State violates Title IX and the players’ First and 14th Amendment rights.
One of Fleming’s teammates, co-captain Brooke Slusser, joined the lawsuit alleging the program withheld knowledge about Fleming’s birth gender from her and other players on the team, forcing the team to share changing and sleeping spaces without being informed that Fleming was a biological male.
Following the ED’s announcement, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey noted, “SJSU caused significant harm to female athletes by allowing a male to compete on the women’s volleyball team—creating unfairness in competition, compromising safety, and denying women equal opportunities in athletics, including scholarships and playing time.”
“Even worse, when female athletes spoke out, SJSU retaliated—ignoring sex-discrimination claims while subjecting one female SJSU athlete to a Title IX complaint for allegedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete competing on a women’s team. This is unacceptable.”
“We will not relent until SJSU is held to account for these abuses and commits to upholding Title IX to protect future athletes from the same indignities.”
As a result of the noncompliance finding, OCR issued a proposed Resolution Agreement to SJSU to voluntarily resolve its Title IX violations. The university has 10 days to comply with a series of agreements or risk “imminent enforcement action.”
It requires SJSU to take the following actions:
Issue a public statement to the SJSU community that SJSU will adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and acknowledge that the sex of a human – male or female – is unchangeable;
Specify that SJSU will follow Title IX by separating sports and intimate facilities based on biological sex;
State that SJSU will not delegate its obligation to comply with Title IX to any external association or entity and will not contract with any entity that discriminates on the basis of sex;
Restore to individual female athletes all individual athletic records and titles misappropriated by male athletes competing in women’s categories, and issue a personalized letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to each female athlete for allowing her participation in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination; and
Send a personalized apology to every woman who played in SJSU’s women’s indoor volleyball (2022–2024), 2023 beach volleyball, and to any woman on a team that forfeited rather than compete against SJSU while a male student was on the roster—expressing sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position.
Slusser’s parents, Paul and Kim Slusser, provided a joint statement to Fox News Digital addressing the crackdown on the university.
“We’re thrilled that the Trump administration, Secretary McMahon, and the Department of Education are taking action on the issue of men in women’s sports—something the last administration did not do! San Jose State University completely failed its female athletes, and it’s about time they’re held accountable,” the statement read.
“We’re watching closely to see how they respond, and our next step is to fight for justice in court. San Jose State and the Mountain West Conference betrayed the volleyball team, and they will have to answer for it.”
The parents had to watch their daughter endure an eating disorder and an academic setback as a result of the trauma from the scandal.
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