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FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (ED) said it has notified San Jose State University (SJSU) that it faces “imminent enforcement action” for its “refusal to comply with Title IX.”
SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system filed a lawsuit earlier in March to challenge an ED investigation that found the university violated Title IX in its handling of a biologically male transgender volleyball player on a women’s team from 2022-24.
Now the administration is cracking down on that opposition.
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“We have given SJSU multiple opportunities to address its Title IX violations with common sense actions: segregate male and female athletes based on their biological sex, keep men out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, restore rightfully earned titles and accolades to female athletes, and apologize to the women who are forced to protect themselves,” ED’s Assistant Secretary of State’s aide said. Kimberly Richey said in a statement.
“Yet SJSU remains stubborn, choosing a radical ideology over the safety, dignity and justice of its own students. With today’s action, the department is putting the university on notice: comply with the law or risk losing its federal funding.”
Pakinomist Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response.
Brooke Slusser and Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans call a play during the first set against the Air Force Falcons on Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
The conflict between the Trump administration and the school dates back to the 2024 season, when a national controversy involving transgender player Blaire Fleming sparked a media firestorm in the election cycle, all during Trump’s third White House campaign.
The ED’s investigation alleged, “SJSU actively recruited and allowed a man to compete on the women’s indoor and beach volleyball teams and reportedly instructed members of the coaching staff not to tell the female players that the athlete was a man.”
The investigation added that “on several occasions, the male athlete spiked the ball so forcefully that it knocked the women on the opposing team to the ground.”
One of the salient details of the investigation’s findings was that a female SJSU player “discovered that the male student had conspired to have a member of the opposing team spike her in the face during an upcoming game. SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected this female athlete to a Title IX complaint for being ‘misgendered’ online in the video when it allegedly ‘discussed this video’ interviews.”
Former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser has included those allegations in her ongoing lawsuit against SJSU and CSU officials.
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After SJSU and CSU announced they were suing the Trump administration to challenge the results, Slusser and other former NCAA players came forward about their alleged experience during the scandal and how it affected them in recent interviews with Pakinomist Digital.
Slusser, who shared an apartment with Fleming at SJSU without knowing the athlete’s birth gender, became the subject of viral debate after her interview in which she reflected on the experience of sharing a room with Fleming.
“You find yourself just getting cozy in a bed with a man you know nothing about… me [was] Unknowingly sharing a bed at the time with a man,” Slusser said, also alleging that SJSU volleyball coach Todd Kress encouraged her to live in the same apartment as the trans teammate as another group of players also searched for a final tenant.
Former Utah State volleyball star Kaylie Ray told Pakinomist Digital that during games against SJSU and Fleming in 2022 and 23, before Fleming’s birth gender was known, she had teammates suffer finger injuries from the trans athlete’s spikes.
“I had teammates who had severely jammed their fingers, fortunately not broken, but a handful of girls who had received minor injuries from the male player,” Ray said, adding, “We knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal game, there was nothing we could do to stop that person.”
The Rays’ Utah State team became one of five teams to lose at least one game to SJSU in 2024, apparently in protest of Fleming. She says the forfeit affected her team’s hopes of winning their fourth straight Mountain West championship.
Meanwhile, the University of Wyoming lost two games to SJSU in 2024. Former Cowgirls player Macey Boggs told Pakinomist Digital that the decisions to forfeit the games “permanently destroyed” friendships among her teammates.
“There were some of the girls that I really enjoyed and we got along, and then this situation came up, some conflict arose, and we ended up going our separate ways because of that … as soon as we played in our last game, we all went our separate ways … it was hard to maintain those relationships,” Boggs said.
SJSU was plagued by a separate Title IX violation in sports, which it had to resolve with former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021. The university ultimately reached a $1.6 million settlement with the Department of Justice in 2021.
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The DoJ found that for more than a decade, SJSU failed to adequately respond to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, of female student-athletes by an athletic trainer then working at SJSU, beginning in 2009, when female student-athletes reported that the coach subjected them to repeated, unwelcome sexual touching.
The department and SJSU entered into a comprehensive agreement to address the results of the investigation, which began in June 2020 during Trump’s first term.
Now, Trump’s current administration is giving the school 10 more days to comply with a series of settlement agreements to resolve the volleyball situation or face enforcement action, including referral to the DOJ and termination of SJSU’s federal funding.
