A bid by the co-captain of San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team to get a purportedly transgender teammate banned from the Mountain West Conference Championship has failed.
Co-captain Brooke Slusser and her co-plaintiffs waited too long to seek a court order barring the player from the tournament, which starts Wednesday, Colorado federal court judge S. Kato Crews ruled Monday.
Slusser — along with former Spartan volleyball players Alyssa Sugai and Elle Patterson, San Jose State associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, and eight players from four schools that have forfeited games against the Spartans over the player’s presence on the team — asked the court Nov. 15 for an emergency injunction. They had requested a court order banning the player from future games, including the championship, and that the conference’s policy allowing transgender players be rescinded. They also wanted Spartan wins that occurred via forfeit cancelled, plus a recalculation of conference standings based on those requested changes.
Crews said an emergency injunction “is an extraordinary remedy,” and should only be granted if clearly shown to be necessary to prevent an irreparable harm, and that if it were considered in a trial, would have a “substantial likelihood of success.”
This news organization is not naming the player, as they have not confirmed their status. Crews noted that no defendants in the lawsuit dispute that a transgender woman is on the Spartan team.
For courts, temporary injunctions like those sought in this case are intended to “preserve the status quo” until a trial can provide a legal resolution, Crews said. Under accepted court precedent, that status quo should be “the last peaceable uncontested status existing between the parties before the dispute developed,” Crews wrote.
That peaceable status, according to the judge, had existed after the conference’s transgender policy was ratified in 2022 and after the player began competing for the Spartans that year, the judge wrote.
Granting the injunction would have altered the status quo because the player has been on the Spartan roster since 2022, and throughout the 2024 season, and the conference’s Transgender Participation Policy has been in effect since August 2022, the judge said.
The Spartan team over the weekend secured the No. 2 seed spot in the six-team tournament, with a bye in the first round. Then they are scheduled to face the winner of a match between Utah State and Boise State — two of the five teams that have forfeited against San Jose State.
Slusser and the others sued San Jose State officials, the conference and other defendants in Colorado federal court Nov. 13.
Slusser earlier joined a similar lawsuit, in Georgia federal court, against the National Collegiate Athletic Association over its rules allowing certain transgender women to play women’s sports.
Check back on this developing story.