WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) deemed California’s San José State University (SJSU) in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 for permitting a gender-confused male to compete on its female indoor volleyball team and punishing individuals who objected.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, former assistant head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose filed a 33-page Title IX complaint over Braden “Blaire” Fleming, a male 6-foot-1 redshirt junior who plays outside hitter and whose participation spurred numerous other schools to refuse to play against the team.
Batie-Smoose maintained that Fleming’s leaping and spiking abilities “exceeded that of any player in the conference,” that other players were not aware of his true sex, that the school gave him preferential treatment to the point of cultivating a culture of fear for those who had reservations about him, and that he allegedly colluded with a female opponent on Colorado State’s squad to potentially injure teammate Brooke Slusser, who had publicly expressed opposition to playing with him (Slusser has continued to endure threats for her stance).
After filing her objections, Batie-Smoose was suspended indefinitely in November 2024, and her contract was not renewed in 2025, prompting a Title IX complaint alleging viewpoint discrimination. The Trump administration DOE opened a Title IX investigation into SJSU and other schools last February.
“SJSU caused significant harm to female athletes by allowing a male to compete on the women’s volleyball team—creating unfairness in competition, compromising safety, and denying women equal opportunities in athletics, including scholarships and playing time,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in this week’s announcement finding the school in violation. “Even worse, when female athletes spoke out, SJSU retaliated—ignoring sex-discrimination claims while subjecting one female SJSU athlete to a Title IX complaint for allegedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete competing on a women’s team. This is unacceptable. We will not relent until SJSU is held to account for these abuses and commits to upholding Title IX to protect future athletes from the same indignities.”
To make amends, OCR has put forth a resolution agreement that would require SJSU to publicly affirm that it will adopt a biology-based understanding of sex going forward; separate sports and intimate facilities on the basis of actual sex; not delegate Title IX compliance to external organizations; not contract with any group that discriminates on the basis of sex; and restore athletic records and titles that had been denied to female athletes by the previous policy.
Perhaps most interestingly, the school must also “issue a personalized letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to each female athlete for allowing her participation in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination” as well as a “personalized apology to every woman who played in SJSU’s women’s indoor volleyball (2022–2024), 2023 beach volleyball, and to any woman on a team that forfeited rather than compete against SJSU while a male student was on the roster—expressing sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position.”
Leftist outlet LGBTQ Nation reports that SJSU says it is “in the process of reviewing the Department’s findings and proposed resolution agreement. We remain committed to providing a safe, respectful, and inclusive educational environment for all students while complying with applicable laws and regulations.” The school has 10 days from January 28 to comply.
Allowing gender-confused individuals in opposite-sex sports is promoted by the left as a matter of “inclusivity,” but critics note that indulging “transgender” athletes undermines the original rational basis for having sex-specific athletics in the first place, thereby depriving female athletes of recognition and professional or academic opportunities.
Critics also warn that forcing girls to share intimate facilities such as bathrooms, showers, or changing areas with members of the opposite sex violates their privacy rights, subjects them to needless emotional stress, and gives male predators a viable pretext to enter female bathrooms or lockers by simply claiming transgender status.
There have been numerous high-profile examples in recent years of men winning women’s competitions, and research affirms that physiology gives males distinct athletic advantages that cannot be negated by hormone suppression.
In a 2019 paper published by the Journal of Medical Ethics, New Zealand researchers found that “healthy young men [do] not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone [use]”; therefore, “the advantage to [gender-confused men] afforded by the [International Olympic Committee] guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Even the left-wing United Nations has acknowledged as much, via an October 2024 report by Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, which found that more than 600 female athletes around the world have lost more than 890 medals to men in 29 sports as of March 2024. “To avoid the loss of a fair opportunity, males must not compete in the female categories of sport,” the report concluded.
In America since the 1980s, more than 1,941 gold medals in female events that would have gone to female athletes have instead been claimed by men identifying as “trans women,” and, along with them, more than $493,173 in prize money across more than 10,067 amateur and professional events, according to data compiled by He Cheated and reviewed by Concerned Women for America.
