It was September 2024 when San Jose State University volleyball player Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit against the NCAA for threatening privacy, safety, and fairness for female athletes by allowing males to compete in their sports.
In the short time since then, Brooke’s story has made a major impact in the fight to protect women’s sports. Five teams have forfeited a total of seven matches against Brooke’s school after it was revealed that a male athlete, Blaire Fleming, is playing on the women’s volleyball team.
Rather than heeding the concerns of female athletes, SJSU officials have allowed Fleming to continue competing against women and even silenced a staff member who questioned the decision. Now, a group of twelve women have filed a new lawsuit against officials from SJSU and the Mountain West Conference.
Coach punished after raising concerns
In the initial lawsuit that Brooke joined, she detailed some of the uncomfortable experiences she was forced to endure. Brooke said she shared a residence with Fleming and that they roomed together on many team trips before she even realized that Fleming was male.
In October 2024, SJSU assistant volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose joined Brooke in taking a stand. Melissa filed a Title IX complaint against SJSU for allowing a male athlete to compete against women, and she accused the school of creating a toxic culture by favoring Fleming over its female volleyball players.
“Safety is being taken away from women,” Melissa told Fox News. “Fair play is taken away from women. We need more and more people to do this and fight this fight because women’s sports, as we know it right now, will be forever changed.”
Unfortunately, SJSU officials have not shown any signs of remorse. Instead, they suspended Melissa indefinitely just days after she filed the complaint. According to Outkick, they also forced her to turn in her keys and school ID.
“For speaking out, that’s what I get,” Melissa told World. “I think they’ll do anything on that side to protect a male player.”
For Brooke and some of her teammates, losing Melissa means losing one of the only people at SJSU who seemed to be listening to their concerns.
“My assistant coach spoke truth to protect my team. Then … they fire her,” Slusser wrote on social media. “They took away the only safe space we had in the program. Because she knew that it was right to stand up for the 18 women on the team. Not one man.”
But even in the face of fierce backlash, Brooke and other female athletes are not backing down.
New lawsuit challenges administrators to ‘do their jobs’
In November 2024, a dozen women including Brooke Slusser, Melissa Batie-Smoose, other current and former SJSU women’s volleyball players, and women’s volleyball players from four other schools in the Mountain West Conference filed a lawsuit against the conference and its commissioner, Gloria Nevarez.
The lawsuit alleges that the Mountain West, which includes SJSU and four of the teams that forfeited games against them, implemented its “Transgender Participation Policy” in an attempt to silence free speech.
The policy states that each Mountain West school can determine whether to allow male athletes who identify as transgender to compete on its women’s teams. It also states that if a team “refuses to compete in an intraconference contest against a fellow MW member institution’s team which includes an eligible transgender student-athlete,” it will be counted as a forfeit and a win for the opposing team.
According to the lawsuit, the Mountain West issued its policy the same day that Boise State University became the first team in the conference to announce it would forfeit against SJSU. The lawsuit says this policy was meant to punish female athletes who decline to play against male athletes.
The women who filed the lawsuit are asking a federal district court to “either disqualify San Jose State from competing in the conference tournament, disqualify Blaire Fleming from competing in the conference tournament, and/or remove the losses from the records of teams who protested by not competing against SJSU,” Outkick reported.
“Because the administrators don’t have the courage to do their jobs, we have to ask the federal courts to do their jobs for them,” said Bill Bock, the lead attorney representing the women.
Female athletes have the right to compete without having their privacy and safety threatened by male athletes. Officials from SJSU and the Mountain West should work to protect these women, not ignore their concerns or silence them for speaking up.
