The US Department of Education has given San José State 10 days to comply with a list of demands after finding the university violated Title IX regarding a transgender volleyball player in 2024.
A federal investigation was launched at San José State last year after a controversy over a transgender player marred the 2024 volleyball season. Four Mountain West Conference teams – Boise State, Wyoming, Utah State and Nevada-Reno – each chose to withdraw or cancel two of San José State’s conference games. Boise State also dropped its conference semifinal game to the Spartans.
Transgender player, Blaire Fleming, has been on the San José State roster for three seasons after transferring from Coastal Carolina, although opponents argue that the player’s participation is limited to 2024.
In a news release Wednesday, the Department of Education warned that San José State is risking “law enforcement action” if it does not voluntarily resolve the violation by taking the following steps, not all of which are related to sports:
1) Issue a public statement that SJSU will use biologically based definitions of the terms “male” and “female” and acknowledge that a person’s gender — male or female — is immutable.
2) Clarify that SJSU will comply with Title IX by segregating athletics and intercollegiate sports based on gender.
3) States that SJSU will not delegate its responsibility to comply with Title IX to any outside organization or organization and will not contract with any organization that discriminates against sex.
4) Restore to female athletes all athletic records and titles misused by male athletes competing in women’s fields, and issue a personal letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to each female athlete for allowing her athletic participation to be marred by sexism.
5) Send a personal apology to all women who played SJSU women’s indoor volleyball from 2022 to 2024, beach volleyball in 2023, and any woman on a team that lost a competitive position to SJSU while a male student was on the roster—expressing sincere regret for placing that position on female players.
“SJSU has done a great disservice to female athletes by allowing a man to compete on the women’s volleyball team – creating unfairness in competition, jeopardizing safety, and denying women equal opportunity in athletics, including scholarships and playing time,” said Kimberly Richey, the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for human rights.
“Worse, when female athletes spoke up, SJSU retaliated — ignoring claims of sexism while filing a single SJSU female athlete in a Title IX complaint for alleged ‘mistreatment’ of a male athlete competing on a women’s team. This is unacceptable.”
San José State responded with a statement acknowledging that the Department of Education informed the university of the investigation and findings.
“The university is in the process of reviewing the Department’s findings and the proposed settlement agreement,” the statement said. “We are committed to providing a safe, respectful, and inclusive educational environment for all students while complying with applicable laws and regulations.”
In a New York Times profile, Fleming said he learned about transgender identity when he was in the eighth grade. “It was time to turn on the light,” he said. “I felt this great relief and a weight off my shoulders. It made so much sense.”
With the support of his mother and stepfather, Fleming worked with therapists and doctors and began social and medical change, according to the Times. When she joined the girls’ volleyball team in high school, her coaches and teammates knew she was transgender and accepted her.
Fleming’s first two years at San José State were uneventful, but in 2024 captain Brooke Slusser joined lawsuits against the NCAA, the Mountain West Conference and San José State officials after she allegedly shared hotel rooms and locker rooms with Fleming without being told she was transgender.
The Department of Education also ruled that Fleming and a Colorado State player conspired to stab Slusser in the face, even though the Mountain West investigation found “sufficient evidence to support allegations of misconduct.” Slusser didn’t get nailed in the face during the game.
President Trump signed an executive order last year designed to prevent transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams. The order stated that educational institutions and sports organizations may not ignore “basic biological facts between the two sexes.” The NCAA responded by banning transgender athletes.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” gives federal agencies, including the Justice and Education departments, broad latitude to ensure that federally funded organizations comply with Title IX in line with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets a person’s gender as the gender they were assigned at birth.
San José State has been part of the federal government ever since. If the university does not voluntarily comply with the actions on the government’s list, it may face a lawsuit from the Department of Justice and risk losing federal funding.
“We will not stop until SJSU takes responsibility for this abuse and commits to honoring Title IX to protect future athletes from similar actions,” Richey said.
San José State was found in violation of Title IX in an unrelated lawsuit in 2021 and paid $1.6 million to more than a dozen female athletes after the Justice Department found the university failed to properly handle student allegations of sexual harassment against a former athletic trainer.
A federal investigation found that San José State did not take sufficient action in response to athlete reports and retaliated against two employees who raised repeated concerns about Scott Shaw, the former director of sports medicine. Shaw was sentenced to 24 months in prison for illegally touching female student-athletes under the pretense of providing medical treatment.
The current finding against San José State comes two weeks after federal investigators announced that the California Community College Athletic Assn. and four other state colleges and school districts are the targets of investigations into whether their transgender participation policies violate Title IX.
The investigation directed the California Community College Athletic Assn. legislation that allows transgender and non-binary students to participate on women’s sports teams if students have completed “at least one calendar year of testosterone suppression.”
Also, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has launched a Title IX investigation into 18 school districts across the United States on the heels of the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on efforts to protect women’s and girls’ sports.
