Last week I wrote about a Title IX lawsuit filed by players and one coach against the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team. The lawsuit was filed because the SJSU team includes a trans woman whose athletic ability exceeds that of other members of her team or, according to the lawsuit, of any player on any women’s team.
During practices in August 2024 immediately before the 2024 season Slusser and Batie-Smoose saw that Fleming was hitting the ball with more force than in 2023 and far harder than any woman they had ever played or coached with or against.
Where Fleming stood out was spiking the volleyball and blocking on the front row due to Fleming’s leaping ability and hitting power, which far exceeded that of any player in the conference and was the most explosive of any player that SJSU’s Associate Head Coach has observed in collegiate women’s volleyball…
Fleming’s spikes were estimated to be traveling upwards of 80 miles per hour, which is faster than a woman hits a volleyball.
Now the University of Utah has filed a motion to join that lawsuit.
Utah State University has filed a motion to join a federal lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference, challenging the organization’s transgender participation policy.
The move comes after the state’s Republican political leaders — including Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz — urged the university to join the lawsuit that was filed last week in U.S. District Court by 11 volleyball players and one coach in the Mountain West.
USU volleyball player Kaylie Ray is one of the 12 plaintiffs in the original lawsuit. According to Utah State’s motion, the Aggie volleyball team took an anonymous survey and 11 players, including Ray, decided to not play an October match against San Jose State “due to concerns of fairness and to communicate that they do not agree with the TPP (transgender participation policy) and hold strong personal and political beliefs that transgender women should not be permitted to compete in women’s sports.”
The lawsuit specifically requested that the trans athlete at SJSU not be allowed to participate in a conference which starts next week. An emergency hearing was held yesterday.
An emergency hearing was held in Colorado Thursday morning regarding a lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference and San Jose State University…
The judge hearing the case promised a decision expected “as prompt as possible.” The Mountain West Tournament starts November 27…
As it stands, SJSU’s regular season is over after Boise State forfeited Thursday’s match. San Jose is currently a fourth seed in the conference tournament.
That decision was expected as soon as today but so far it seems no decision has been issued. The Washington Post has published a deep dive into the lawsuit and the decision by various schools to forfeit games in protest against SJSU. This very much feels like an effort to cast opponents of trans women in women’s sports as transphobes though digging through public record emails didn’t actually turn up any smoking guns.
To learn more about how Mountain West schools navigated this fall, The Post used public records requests to obtain emails and text messages to and from coaches and administrators. The Post received documents from Wyoming, Boise State and Utah State, though it is still waiting on records from Nevada and San José State. The documents obtained reveal consistent pressure on decision-makers, mostly from people lobbying teams to forfeit matches with San José State.
So people opposed to trans women in sports are lobbying the schools which isn’t a surprise given that a strong majority of the public opposes the practice. We do learn that SJSU tried to get one school to pay them for money they said was lost as a result of a forfeit.
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya emailed Boise State AD Jeremiah Dickey with a request.
“From a practical matter, your institution’s arbitrary decision not to play an otherwise eligible NCAA team has resulted in harm to SJSU financially and our institution brand,” Konya wrote to Dickey in an email obtained under the Idaho Public Records Act. “As an example and at minimum, we estimate we missed out on approximately $1,250 in game day revenue by not playing the [match] on Saturday when you add all of the various revenue sources (i.e., concessions, parking among others). I would ask to be made whole at the very least.”
A Boise State spokesman said the school has not paid San José State any money following the forfeit, nor did Dickey answer Konya’s email.
No response is what that request deserved. The story also includes this quote from an athletic director downplaying the trans player as an athlete.
“I absolutely respect your position and agree with many arguments you made,” he wrote. “I do think it is important to note, we have played against this athlete for the past two seasons and our student-athletes felt safe in the previous matches. She is not the best or most dominant hitter on the Spartans team.
The Post wants to portray this person as no big deal on the court, which is why I included that excerpt above from the lawsuit. It makes clear that, this year in particular the trans athlete in question was hitting much harder than they had in previous years. What they did in previous years is sidestepping the issue which I assume was the Post’s intent in leaving that out.
Here’s the ABC News report on the lawsuit.
