A San Jose State women’s volleyball player will be allowed to compete in her conference tournament this week, a federal judge in Denver ruled Monday, despite complaints from competitors objecting to her participation on the grounds that she is transgender.
U.S. District Judge Kato Crews denied a motion seeking emergency injunctive relief to suspend the San Jose State player, strip the Spartans of six league victories won by forfeit and prevent the team from participating in the Mountain West tournament that starts on Wednesday.
In his 28-page ruling, Crews barely addressed the alleged fairness and safety issues raised by San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser and other Mountain West women’s volleyball players. Crews focused instead on the timing of the plaintiffs’ complaint, filed less than two weeks before the Mountain West tournament was set to begin in Las Vegas.
Mountain West’s transgender participation policy has been in place since 2022 and all teams have been made aware of it, Crews said. The judge argued that prosecutors “could have filed for preliminary injunction much earlier” since they had known about San Jose State’s alleged transgender player for months.
“The Court finds that the migrants’ delay was not reasonable,” Crews wrote. “There is no evidence to suggest that they were previously barred from seeking emergency relief, and the rush to litigate these complex issues over a mandatory injunction now places significant strain on the MWC at the eleventh hour.”
San Jose State is seeded second in the Mountain West tournament and receives a bye in the first round. The Spartans are scheduled to play the winner of a quarterfinal between third-seeded Utah State and sixth-seeded Boise State on Friday.
Utah State and Boise State were among four Mountain West schools to lose games against San Jose State during the regular season. Nevada and Wyoming also opted to boycott rather than face an opponent believed to have a transgender player among its top forwards.
“The vast majority of our team decided this is something we wanted to take a stand on,” University of Nevada outside hitter Sia Liilii told Yahoo Sports last month. “We didn’t want to play against a male player.
“In all our team meetings it always came back to the fact that men do not belong in women’s sports. If you were born as a biological male, you do not belong in women’s sports. It’s not even about this individual athlete. It’s about fair competition and safety for everyone.”
Yahoo Sports is not naming the San Jose State volleyball player in question because neither she nor her university have publicly commented on her gender identity. San Jose State has said all of its women’s volleyball players are eligible to compete under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules.
The NCAA allows transgender female athletes to compete if they meet eligibility criteria set by their sport’s individual governing body. For women’s volleyball, this means transgender female athletes must submit documentation of their testosterone levels from at least the previous year to prove they do not exceed the “normal female reference range for their age group.”
“We are pleased that the Court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules,” San Jose State said in a statement Monday. “Our team is looking forward to competing in the Mountain West volleyball tournament this week.”
Before finding itself at the center of the national firestorm surrounding transgender athletes, women’s volleyball at San Jose State couldn’t have been more obscure. This is a program that last won a conference title in 1985, last appeared in the NCAA tournament in 2001 and rarely draws more than a few hundred fans to home games.
The player, who is believed to be transgender, played two seasons without incident at San Jose State earlier this year. She wasn’t an all-conference team, nor was she among the Mountain West leaders in kills or homicide rates.
Her presence first drew attention last April, when Reduxx published a story claiming that a San Jose State women’s volleyball player was transgender and had withheld her biological gender from teammates and opponents. The self-described “pro-woman, pro-child” outlet said it began reporting the story after receiving a tip from an opponent’s mother.
In September, Slusser joined a federal lawsuit challenging the NCAA policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. Slusser roomed with the player in question after transferring from Alabama last fall, but only learned about her teammate’s alleged gender identity after Reduxx outed her.
In the legal filing, Slusser insists that her alleged transgender teammate hits the ball with such force that it gives San Jose State “an unfair advantage” and poses a safety risk to other players during practices and games. Slusser claimed that in practice the player’s spikes were “faster than she had ever seen a woman hit a volleyball.”
Those comments from Slusser threw a lit match onto a pile of kindling. Local and national media began reporting the story, activist groups attacked San Jose State, and right-wing politicians exerted their influence.
On the eve of the September 28 game at San Jose State, Boise State released a 48-word statement revealing it would not play and accept a forfeit loss. Wyoming, Utah and Nevada followed suit. In each case, the schools chose not to explain why they weren’t playing. In both cases, the announcements were followed by a social media post from a senator or governor applauding the decision.
The question that has lingered ever since is how that quartet of programs would respond if they were to draw San Jose State in the Mountain West tournament. Would they boycott again knowing that a bid to the NCAA Tournament was on the line and that a loss would likely end their seasons?
That question remains now that Crews has declined to grant a preliminary injunction.
The judge wrote: ‘The emergency motion would create a risk of confusion and upend months of planning. … On balance, the shares favor the MWC’s interest in holding and allowing the tournament to proceed as planned.”
