A federal investigation has determined that a California university’s transgender policies are in violation of federal law, inflicting serious damage on female students. The Department of Education (DOE) announced last week that San José State University (SJSU) violated Title IX, a federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational institutions, due to the university’s policy allowing biological males to identify as transgender and compete in girls’ sports.

“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,” said DOE Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey, in a statement. “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,” she continued. “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.”

The DOE provided SJSU with a list of policy changes and actions to implement within 10 days in order to avoid losing federal funding:

• “Issue a public statement to the SJSU community that SJSU will adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and acknowledge that the sex of a human — male or female — is unchangeable;
• Specify that SJSU will follow Title IX by separating sports and intimate facilities based on biological sex;
• State that SJSU will not delegate its obligation to comply with Title IX to any external association or entity and will not contract with any entity that discriminates on the basis of sex;
• Restore to individual female athletes all individual athletic records and titles misappropriated by male athletes competing in women’s categories, and 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; and
• Send 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.”

According to the DOE, SJSU “actively recruited” a transgender-identifying biological male to play on its girls’ indoor and beach volleyball teams, ordering staff not to tell female students that the biological male was a biological male. “As a result, female athletes on the team shared women’s locker rooms and hotel rooms with the male student while being unaware that he is a member of the opposite sex,” the DOE reported. The presence of the male athlete, Blaire Fleming, was severely damaging to female athletes. SJSU volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser, who was made to share a bedroom and changing spaces with Fleming, filed a lawsuit against the university and the Mountain West Conference. Slusser’s parents praised the DOE, President Donald Trump, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon for “taking action on the issue of men in women’s sports — something the last administration did not do!”

“San Jose State University completely failed its female athletes, and it’s about time they’re held accountable,” Paul and Kim Slusser said, according to Fox News. “We’re watching closely to see how they respond, and our next step is to fight for justice in court. San Jose State and the Mountain West Conference betrayed the volleyball team, and they will have to answer for it.”

Slusser reported that, due to the traumatic effects of sharing intimate spaces with a biological male, she developed a “severe” eating disorder, losing over 30 pounds in one semester, and that her menstrual cycle was even impacted. “I ended up losing my menstrual cycle for nine months. So it was definitely severe,” the female athlete said. Fleming, who repeatedly injured female athletes by spiking the volleyball too hard, reportedly conspired with an opposing team member to have the ball spiked hard in Slusser’s face during a match. The DOE noted, “During one season, seven all-women’s teams from other universities forfeited their competitions, accepting a loss rather than competing against a male.”

In 2024, the University of Nevada-Reno’s (UNR’s) girls’ volleyball team was scheduled to play against SJSU’s team, including Fleming. According to a Fox News report, the girls on the UNR team did not want to play against Fleming, citing safety concerns in addition to principles of fair competition, but school officials reportedly pressured the girls into playing anyway. When players shared that they wanted to forfeit, as several other schools already had, athletics director Stephanie Rempe held a meeting — without a Title IX officer present — and took forfeiture off the table.

“This meeting was horrible,” former UNR volleyball captain Sia Liilii said. “They told us there was no advantage by Blaire because [he] was on estrogen and testosterone blockers in order to level the playing field,” she recalled. “A bunch of the girls and I expressed not wanting to play for the reasons of safety, fairness, and an opportunity for women in sports being taken away by a male athlete. Instead of supporting this decision, we were told that maybe we should think about all the ‘facts’ first in case we wanted to reconsider.”

Nonetheless, the girls on the UNR volleyball team publicly asserted that they would not compete against SJSU. UNR administrators threatened the girls with possible “legal issues” if they did not play and reportedly engaged in “emotional blackmail.” Administrators also attempted, unsuccessfully, to bar the girls from meeting with Republican politicians and girls’ sports advocates like Riley Gaines. Ultimately, in the face of mounting public scrutiny, UNR announced that the girls would be free not to compete if they so chose.

The DOE announced a Title IX investigation into UNR last month. “Time and again, the Trump Administration has made its position clear: violations of women’s rights, dignity, and fairness are unacceptable,” Richey said at the time. “We will leave no stone unturned in these investigations to uphold women’s right to equal access in education programs — a fight that started over half a century ago and is far from finished.”