Judge allows San Jose State volleyball player to participate in upcoming tournament

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A federal judge ruled a San Jose State women's volleyball player can play in the Mountain West Conference tournament this week.
• Several plaintiffs, including a Utah State player, allege the student-athlete is transgender and should be disqualified.
• The judge said plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed in their case and rejected a request for a preliminary injunction.

DENVER — A San Jose State University women's volleyball player can participate in the upcoming Mountain West Conference tournament, a federal judge ruled Monday, after several plaintiffs sought to have the student-athlete disqualified, alleging the player is transgender.

Utah State University women's volleyball player Kaylie Ray was one of the original plaintiffs in the case, and the university later signed on to arguments from plaintiffs asking for the San Jose State player to be declared ineligible for the tournament, which begins Wednesday. The lawsuit alleges that the student-athlete is transgender and said her participation would deprive other female athletes of fair competition.

U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews on Monday rejected the request for a preliminary injunction to block the student from participation, saying the plaintiffs "failed to meet their burden to show irreparable harm, a likelihood of success on the merits, or that the balance of harms or equities is in their favor."

"Utah State is reviewing the court's order," the university said in a statement. "Right now, our women's volleyball program is focused on the game this Wednesday, and we'll be cheering them on."

Although Crews said the defendants did not dispute that San Jose State has a transgender woman on its women's volleyball roster, he said Supreme Court precedent on the interpretation of "sex" in Title IX makes the plaintiffs unlikely to succeed.

"Noting that Title VII prohibits employers from taking certain action 'because of sex,' (the Supreme Court) held 'it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,'" Crews wrote, referring to the high court's 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

He also said because Blaire Fleming has played on the team since 2022, and because several Mountain West schools — USU included — have already forfeited by not competing against San Jose State earlier this season, "most (if not all) of the alleged harm has already occurred."

"At this stage, however, there is no longer a threat of harm because the alleged harm already occurred when each team incurred the loss on its record," he wrote.

The Mountain West's transgender participation policy was adopted by the conference in 2022, he wrote, and said the plaintiffs would have had a higher likelihood of success had the lawsuit been filed earlier, saying the "rush to litigate these complex issues now over a mandatory injunction places a heavy lift on the MWC at the eleventh hour."

USU is the No. 3 seed going into the conference tournament and will play Boise State in the first round of the tournament on Wednesday at 5 p.m. MT. The winner of that game is scheduled to face San Jose State on Friday afternoon.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Bridger Beal-Cvetko

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Bridger Beal-Cvetko is a reporter for KSL.com. He covers politics, Salt Lake County communities and breaking news. Bridger has worked for the Deseret News and graduated from Utah Valley University.