Collegiate women’s volleyball players filed multiple lawsuits on Wednesday against the Mountain West Conference over the inclusion of trans-identifying male players in their sport.
A dozen women have cited violations of their First Amendment rights and Title IX protections in response to San Jose State University’s biologically male star player Blaire Fleming’s participation in the MWC, prompting four schools in the conference to forfeit games against SJSU, OutKick reported.
Several of Flemings’ SJSU teammates, like Captain Brooke Slusser and two former Spartans — along with female athletes from four other colleges — are part of the suit against the conference, its commissioner and SJSU officials over the conference’s adoption of the “Transgender participation policy” in September after the first school, Boise State, forfeited its game.
The suit said that the policy is “intended to chill protests and other expressive conduct, including boycotts, on a women’s rights issue” of women athletes in the MWC. It also claims that the trans policy was adopted outside the “normal course of MW rules and procedures” and that it was an effort to prevent schools from exercising their First Amendment Rights, the outlet noted.
This is HUGE. Female volleyball players in the Mountain West conference drop a bombshell lawsuit against the @MountainWest citing First Amendment & Title IX violations.
Several of his SJSU teammates signed on as well. This is the way. Hold the line!!! 👏🏼https://t.co/Co6bFPUfEo
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) November 13, 2024
“Recently, the MWC, SJSU, and the other Defendants have collectively manipulated MWC rules, diminished sport opportunities for women, spread inaccurate information, used their positions to chill and suppress speech with which they disagree, and punished dozens of female collegiate volleyball student-athletes for taking a public stand for their right to compete in a separate sports category, all in a concerted effort to stamp out debate over women’s rights in sport,” the lawsuit read.
“The NCAA, Mountain West Conference, and college athletic directors around the country are failing women,” Bill Bock, lead attorney for the plaintiffs and the pro-woman organization Independent Council On Women’s Sport (ICONS), which is funding and backing the lawsuit, said.
“Because the administrators don’t have the courage to do their jobs, we have to ask the federal courts to do their jobs for them,” he added.
The lawsuit requests emergency injunctive relief in advance of the MW women’s volleyball tournament in Las Vegas, which starts on Nov. 27. It also calls on either disqualifying SJSU and Fleming from competing in the tournament and/or removing the losses from the records of teams who forfeited SJSU games and therefore the wins from SJSU.
Five schools have forfeited playing SJSU in protest of the biologically male star player on the CA team. Those schools include Southern Utah University, Boise State University, the University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and the University of Nevada.
Related: University Finally Scraps Match After Women’s Team Refuses To Play Team Whose Star Player Is Male
