The Trump Administration, citing “the mistreatment of female athletes,” took direct aim Thursday at San Jose State University for allowing a transgender player on the women’s volleyball team.
San Jose State was one of just two universities the new Republican president’s Department of Education singled out for inquiries over transgender athlete participation in women’s sports, alleging violations of the 1972 civil rights law known as Title IX that bars sex discrimination in education. The University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association are also being investigated.
The announcement came a day after Trump had signed a “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order reversing Title IX guidance under former President Joe Biden urging educators to allow players on teams that suited their gender identity rather than their gender assigned at birth.
“The previous administration trampled the rights of American women and girls — and ignored the indignities to which they were subjected in bathrooms and locker rooms — to promote a radical transgender ideology,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights, said in a statement.
Also Thursday, in a dramatic reversal, the NCAA limited competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth only. It had previously allowed transgender athletes to play at San Jose State and other colleges.
“President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said.
Throughout last fall’s volleyball season, San Jose State University officials never acknowledged having a transgender athlete on the team because the player, then competing in the senior’s final season, never came out publicly.
In a statement Thursday, San Jose State President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said she is “committed to ensuring that all of our students, including our student-athletes, are treated fairly, free from discrimination, and afforded the rights and protections granted under federal and state law, including privacy rights.”
At the same time, she said that “laws and policies may intersect in complex ways.”
Shiwali Patel, a lawyer with the National Women’s Legal Center, which supports transgender rights, called the federal investigation a “gross abuse of power.” The impact of transgender athletes in college sports has been wildly exaggerated, she said, especially because the numbers are minuscule — 10 transgender athletes out of 510,000 in the NCAA.
“Circuit courts have made clear that trans women and girls have civil rights protections, including in the context of playing sports,” Patel said.
Trump’s executive order gives federal agencies, including the Justice and Education departments, wide latitude to ensure universities and other entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets “sex” as the gender people are assigned at birth.
The Spartans became the subject of national news last fall when Brooke Slusser, co-captain of the San Jose State women’s volleyball team, joined a lawsuit in September accusing the NCAA of discriminating against women by allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports. Melissa Batie-Smoose, the team’s assistant coach, later joined her in a second lawsuit.
Slusser claimed in court filings that one of her teammates was transgender, contended that the teammate had a physical advantage over both teammates and opponents, and that her teammate was given a scholarship over other women.
Slusser said she was not told that her teammate was transgender despite travel accommodations placing them together. The Bay Area News Group has not named the student because she has not publicly confirmed her status or spoken publicly about the controversy.
Multiple teams forfeited matches against the Spartans, who reached the Mountain West Conference tournament final before losing to Colorado State.
In an interview Thursday, Batie-Smoose said the controversy ruined her 30-year friendship with head coach Todd Kress, with whom she had worked at three different universities before joining him at San Jose State in January 2023. Kress supported the transgender athlete’s right to play on the team. Batie-Smoose didn’t.
Batie-Smoose said that the transgender player had initially offered to step aside from the court if her gender became an issue during the season, but once teams began forfeiting, she changed her mind. Only one of the 19 players on the team supported the athlete, she said.
“Then it got worse,” she said.
Emotions ran so high that numerous practices were canceled especially as teams began to forfeit and players began to feel that university administrators and the coach weren’t listening to their concerns. There were spans of two weeks when the team barely had a practice. Some flew home to different states for a week in the middle of October, the height of the season, she said.
Ten of the 19 players from last season have entered the transfer portal to play on other teams, Batie-Smoose said. Four are graduating this spring. Five remain with the team, most because they weren’t able to transfer, she said.
Despite the threats that may come with a federal investigation, Title IX specialist Andrew Miltenberg, a New York lawyer, said San Jose State and other universities with transgender athletes who played last season should be on solid legal footing.
“If they followed the rules at the time, which means they followed NCAA rules, they followed Department of Education, Title IX, Office of Civil Rights, rules and regulations that were in place at that time, I don’t think they did anything wrong,” Miltenberg said.
In the end, he said, Congress should decide the issue with legislation that courts can then interpret.
“I think that the whiplash that most people are getting from one administration to another is not particularly helpful,” he said. “It’s doing nothing to put the issues to rest.”