San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team is at the center of a new legal action over transgender women competing in women’s college sports.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday by team co-captain Brooke Slusser and others seeks a court-ordered injunction banning San Jose State from allowing a player whom Slusser identifed as transgender to compete in the Mountain West Conference championship Nov. 27-30 in Las Vegas. The lawsuit also seeks to ban the conference from allowing the player to compete in the championship.
Slusser — who earlier this season joined a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA over its rules allowing certain transgender women to play women’s sports — and two former Spartans filed the lawsuit against San Jose State’s women’s volleyball coach, two school officials, the California State University system and the NCAA’s Mountain West Conference.
The lawsuit accuses coach Todd Kress, senior associate athletic director Laura Alexander, the school’s senior director of media relations Michelle Smith McDonald and other defendants of manipulating conference rules, reducing sports opportunities for women, spreading inaccurate information, using their positions to “chill and suppress speech with which they disagree.” It also accuses them of punishing dozens of female volleyball athletes “for taking a public stand for their right to compete in a separate sports category, all in a concerted effort to stamp out debate over women’s rights in sport.”
In an emailed statement, San Jose State said it had received a copy of the 132-page lawsuit late Wednesday afternoon, and would not comment on its claims.
The conference said it prioritizes the best interests of its athletes and takes great care to adhere to NCAA and conference policies.
“We take seriously all concerns of student-athlete welfare and fairness,” the conference said in an emailed statement.
This news organization is not naming the player who Slusser and others have identified as transgender, as the player has not confirmed this.
The lawsuit adds more fuel to America’s fiery debate over the participation of transgender women in women’s sports. Like the lawsuit against the NCAA, it is funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, an advocacy group co-founded by former All-American Stanford tennis player Kim Jones.
The furor over the player’s presence on the team has generated nationwide headlines and led four college teams to forfeit games against San Jose State in protest, with two more forfeits pending.
Joining Slusser in the lawsuit are former Spartan volleyball players Alyssa Sugai and Elle Patterson, San Jose State associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, and eight players from the four schools that have forfeited games against the Spartans: Nevada; Utah State; Wyoming; and Boise State.
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The new lawsuit repeats many of the allegations cited in the earlier lawsuit by Slusser, who transferred to San Jose State in 2023, joining the volleyball team on a scholarship, and according to the lawsuit did not know for months that a player with whom she had lived and roomed on road trips was transgender.
The new legal action includes additional allegations that San Jose State officials tried to silence anyone questioning the transgender player’s presence on the team. Kress “brushed Slusser off” when she told him the player’s participation in practice “was putting everyone on the team at risk of serious injury,” the lawsuit said.
Kress has stopped speaking to Slusser or coaching her and is trying to oust her from the team, and became “increasingly hostile” toward Slusser, Batie-Smoose and other players supporting Slusser or concerned about the player’s presence on the team, the lawsuit claimed.
Late last month, Batie-Smoose filed a Title IX federal discrimination complaint against San Jose State, the conference and the NCAA “regarding her concerns about discrimination against women,” the lawsuit said. Four days later, about 90 minutes before the Spartans were to play New Mexico, a San Jose State official blocked Batie-Smoose from entering the Spartan gym, telling her she was suspended indefinitely and must leave campus immediately, the lawsuit alleged.
The complaint alleges two other Spartans players, Sugai and Patterson, were denied scholarships because the transgender player received one instead.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and court orders prohibiting what they say are male players in women’s NCAA sports. The NCAA aligns its rules with USA Volleyball, which states trans women’s players’ testosterone levels “must not exceed the upper limit of the normal female reference range for their age group.”
Currently, the Spartans, in part thanks to six forfeit wins, are second in the Mountain West standings with a conference record of 11-5. The forfeits are counted as wins for the Spartans in Mountain West play, but the NCAA considers them “no contests” for the purposes of tournament eligibility.
The Spartans have completed 18 matches so far and are scheduled to play a 19th against Colorado State on Saturday, reaching the required total for NCAA Tournament eligibility.
It is not clear at this point whether Wyoming, Boise State, Utah State and Nevada, the four Mountain West teams that have forfeited matches against San Jose State, would do so in a potential conference tournament matchup.
Bay Area News Group sports reporter Christian Babcock contributed to this story.