San José State University (SJSU) violated Title IX by allowing a transgender woman to compete on the women’s volleyball team, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said Wednesday.
SJSU was at the center of a 2024 controversy when some students on the women’s volleyball team and competing teams objected to the presence of Blaire Fleming, a transgender woman who had played for the team since 2022, Inside Higher Ed reports. Fleming’s teammates sued SJSU and the NCAA, and other teams forfeited games in protest.
The Education Department launched an investigation into SJSU in 2025, one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports at federally funded schools and colleges. One month prior, Trump signed another executive order declaring that the policy of the United States is that there are two sexes –male and female — which are “not changeable.”
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The department also alleges SJSU violated Title IX by failing to promptly investigate complaints from cisgender female athletes and “by taking action that discouraged women from participating in the Title IX process.”
“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. Even worse, when female athletes spoke out, SJSU retaliated—ignoring sex-discrimination claims while subjecting one female SJSU athlete to a Title IX complaint for allegedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete competing on a women’s team. This is unacceptable,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. “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.”
OCR Title IX Findings Conflict with State Law, LGBTQ+ Advocate Says
Jorge Reyes-Salinas with Equality California, an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, told ABC 7 that the department’s findings conflict with state laws.
“California law clearly protects transgender students from discrimination, including school athletics. Public universities in California are required to follow state civil rights laws, and San Jose State is doing exactly that and hopefully continue to do so,” Reyes-Salinas said. “This is another attempt to use threats and their own executive orders to benefit the investigation they were running.”
San José State Title IX Resolution Agreement
As part of a proposed Resolution Agreement, OCR is requiring SJSU to:
- Issue a public statement to the SJSU community that SJSU will adopt biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ and acknowledge that the sex of a human – male or female – is unchangeable
- Specify that SJSU will follow Title IX by separating sports and intimate facilities based on biological sex
- State that SJSU will not delegate its obligation to comply with Title IX to any external association or entity and will not contract with any entity that discriminates on the basis of sex
- Restore to individual female athletes all individual athletic records and titles misappropriated by male athletes competing in women’s categories, and issue a personalized letter of apology on behalf of SJSU to each female athlete for allowing her participation in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination
- Send a personalized apology to every woman who played in SJSU’s women’s indoor volleyball (2022–2024), 2023 beach volleyball, and to any woman on a team that forfeited rather than compete against SJSU while a male student was on the roster—expressing sincere regret for placing female athletes in that position
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SJSU has 10 days to respond and could face “imminent enforcement action” — such as pulling federal funding — if it doesn’t voluntarily resolve the violations, the Los Angeles Times reported.
An SJSU spokesperson said the school is reviewing the department’s finding and that it “remain[s] committed to providing a safe, respectful, and inclusive educational environment for all students while complying with applicable laws and regulations.”
Wednesday’s announcement comes as the Supreme Court is set to rule this summer on the legality of transgender athlete bans in schools.
