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FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (ED) said it has informed San Jose State University (SJSU) that it is subject to “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 challenging an ED investigation that determined the university violated Title IX in its handling of a biological transgender volleyball player on a 2022-24 women’s team.
Today, the administration is suppressing this resistance.
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“We have provided SJSU with multiple opportunities to resolve its Title IX violations through common-sense actions: separating male and female athletes based on their biological sex, keeping men out of women’s locker rooms and restrooms, restoring rightfully earned titles and honors to female athletes, and apologizing to women forced to drop out of competition to protect themselves,” ED Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement.
“Yet SJSU remains stubborn, choosing radical ideology over safety, dignity and fairness for its own students. With today’s action, the department puts the university on notice: obey the law or risk losing its federal funding.”
PK Press Club 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 at 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 ignited a media storm during the election cycle, all during Trump’s third White House campaign.
ED’s investigation claimed that “SJSU actively recruited and allowed a man to compete on the women’s indoor volleyball and beach volleyball teams and allegedly instructed members of the coaching staff not to tell players that the athlete was a man.”
The investigation added that “on several occasions, the male athlete threw the ball with such force that he knocked the women of the opposing team to the ground.”
One of the most notable details of the investigation’s findings was that an SJSU player “discovered that the student had conspired to have a member of the opposing team punch her in the face during an upcoming game. SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but subsequently subjected this female athlete to a Title IX complaint for allegedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete by discussing this incident in online videos and interviews.”
Former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser included these 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 findings, Slusser and other former NCAA players opened up about their alleged experience during the scandal, and how it affected them, in recent interviews with PK Press Club Digital.
Slusser, who shared an apartment with Fleming at SJSU without knowing the athlete’s birth sex, became the subject of a viral debate after her interview reflecting on the experience of sharing spaces with Fleming.
“You find out you’re relaxing in bed with a man you have no idea about…I [was] unknowingly sharing a bed at that time with a man,” Slusser said, also alleging that SJSU volleyball coach Todd Kress encouraged her to live in the same apartment as her trans teammate while another group of players also sought an end tenant.
Former Utah State volleyball star Kaylie Ray told PK Press Club Digital that in matches against SJSU and Fleming in 2022 and ’23, before Fleming’s birth sex was known, her teammates suffered finger injuries from the trans athlete’s spikes.
“I had teammates who had seriously injured their fingers, luckily not broken, but a handful of girls had suffered 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.”
Ray’s Utah State team became one of five teams to lose at least one game to SJSU in 2024, apparently in protest of Fleming. She said the forfeit impacted her team’s hopes of winning its fourth consecutive Mountain West championship.
Meanwhile, the University of Wyoming lost two games to SJSU in 2024. Former Cowgirls player Macey Boggs told PK Press Club Digital that the decisions to forfeit games “definitely ruined” the friendships between her teammates.
“There were some girls that I really liked, and we got along really well, and then this situation came up, some conflicts arose, and ultimately we went in different directions because of that…as soon as we played our last game, we all went in different directions…it was hard to maintain those relationships,” Boggs said.
SJSU was plagued by a separate Title IX violation in athletics that it had to resolve with former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021. The university ultimately reached a $1.6 million resolution with the Department of Justice in 2021.
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The DOJ found that SJSU failed to adequately respond for more than a decade 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 and unwanted sexual touching.
The department and SJSU reached a comprehensive agreement to address the findings of the investigation, which began in June 2020 during Trump’s first term.
Now, the current Trump administration is giving the school 10 more days to comply with a series of resolution agreements aimed at resolving the volleyball situation, or face enforcement action, including referral to the DOJ and an end to federal funding for SJSU.
