The Trump Administration announced Tuesday that San Jose State University violated Title IX when it allowed a transgender athlete to play on the women’s volleyball team and is demanding the university apologize to every player and acknowledge that the “sex of a human — male or female — is unchangeable.”
The university became a flashpoint during Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for president when former Spartan co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit accusing the National Collegiate Athletic Association of discriminating against women by allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. Numerous teams forfeited matches against the Spartans in protest of playing against an athlete they believed had an unfair advantage.
“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,” Kimberly Richey, the U.S. Department of Education‘s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement Tuesday. “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.”
San Jose State, which never publicly acknowledged a transgender athlete played on the team because the player did not come out publicly, did not immediately respond Tuesday morning to requests for comment. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs.
In its news release, the Department of Education said that to resolve the Title IX violations, San Jose would be required to issue a public statement to the university community that it will will adopt “biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and acknowledge that the sex of a human — male or female — is unchangeable.”
It also requires the university to separate sports and “intimate” facilities “based on biological sex,” restore to all individual athletic records and titles “misappropriated by male athletes competing in women’s categories,” and issue a personalized letter of apology to each female athlete for “allowing her participation in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination,” as well as to any athlete on a team that forfeited.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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