Transgender San José State volleyball player can compete, judge rules

A federal judge ruled Monday that a transgender volleyball player at San José State University can continue to compete on the women’s team.

The decision by Judge S. Kato Crews of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado came two days before San José State was set to compete in a conference tournament involving six other schools, four of which had forfeited earlier games against the Spartans.

Current and former athletes from five other universities in the Mountain West Conference, the athletic conference of which San José State is a part, had sought to bar the player from competition in a Nov. 13 lawsuit. The athletes, joined by San José State’s current co-captain and a recently suspended assistant coach, argued that doing otherwise would violate their rights under Title IX and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The lawsuit had also sought to reverse a conference policy establishing wins, losses and forfeits if a team has a transgender player and rescind San José State’s regular season victories that were the result of other teams refusing to play the school.

None of the Mountain West teams that forfeited matches against San José State this season explicitly stated a reason for doing so, but players for the University of Nevada, Reno held a rally on Oct. 26 advocating for the exclusion of transgender athletes in women’s sports.

Nevada women’s volleyball players told OutKick earlier in October that they voted to forfeit a match against San José State because “we refuse to participate in any match that advances injustice against female athletes.” The school, responding to the players’ vote, said that decision had been made without consulting the university or its athletic department and it “intends to move forward with the match as scheduled.” The school was later forced to forfeit because it did not have enough players.

The San José State player, who has competed on the school’s women’s volleyball team for the past three seasons, has not spoken publicly about how she identifies, and the university has not commented on her identity. But the defendants did not dispute that a transgender woman is on the team, according to Crews’s ruling.

Crews, an appointee of President Biden, wrote on Monday that appellate and Supreme Court precedents had established that the protections of Title IX and the 14th Amendment also apply to transgender individuals, and the plaintiffs were unlikely to win their case. He added that the emergency motion was unnecessary because the conference’s transgender policy has been in place in 2022.

"The Court finds the movants' delay was not reasonable, there is no evidence to suggest they were precluded from seeking emergency relief earlier, and the rush to litigate these complex issues now over a mandatory injunction places a heavy lift on the [Mountain West Conference] at the eleventh hour," Crews wrote.

In an emailed statement, San José State said it “will continue to support its student-athletes and reject discrimination in all forms.”

“All San José State University student-athletes are eligible to participate in their sports under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules,” the university said. “We are gratified that the Court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules. Our team looks forward to competing in the Mountain West volleyball tournament this week.”

The California State University System, which includes San José State, applauded Monday’s ruling, saying it “does not tolerate discrimination of any kind, on or off the court.” The Mountain West Conference said it was "satisfied" with the decision.

The plaintiffs are appealing Crews’s ruling. Attorney William Bock told ESPN Monday that the players plan to ask the court "to protect the women volleyball players who are about to compete for a conference championship.”

San José State University has been at the center of an intensifying debate over transgender athletes since Southern Utah University refused to play the school in September.

During a taped town hall of only female voters in Cumming, Ga., in October, President-elect Trump referenced a viral video of the San José State player spiking the ball at her opponent. “I never saw a ball hit so hard,” he said.

In a Nov. 18 letter to the commissioner of the Mountain West Conference, 13 Republican senators and representatives called on the conference to update its guidelines to prohibit transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams.

“Permitting biological men to play in women’s sports is not equitable; it is an injustice,” they wrote. “Clearly, the Mountain West Conference has dropped the ball.”