Athletic league sued for forcing women to compete against male player

Female athletes from several Mountain West Conference college teams have sued the league and its commissioner for pushing them to compete against a male, using a scheme to stealth-edit the rules to suppress their free speech in violation of Title IX law.

The fight over the presence of the man, Blaire Fleming, who portrays himself as a woman, has been roiling the athletic league in recent months. Multiple teams already have refused to compete against the San Jose State team on which Fleming plays.

The case has developed amid a worldwide push by the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration to promote LGBT ideology, specifically transgenderism, worldwide in U.S. policy and practice.

WND previously reported on the teams whose members simply said they wouldn’t compete against a team with a man playing.

Among the teams whose members rejected the forced competition against a team including a man were Boise State, the University of Wyoming and others.

Now a report from Cowboy State Daily in Wyoming revealed the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Colorado.

It reported three Wyoming volleyball players joined student-athletes from several other Mountain West colleges and a coach in suing.

“Among other things, they claim the conference pushed them into competing with a transgender athlete and stealth-edited its rules to stifle their free speech and violated federal Title IX law,” the report said.

Attorney Bill Bock, representing the athletes and the the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, went to court this week on the dispute.

Plaintiffs include Fleming’s teammate and team co-captain Brooke Slusser of San Jose State University, SJSU former student-athlete Alyssa Sugai, SJSU former student-athlete Elle Patterson, who says she lost a scholarship opportunity to Fleming; University of Nevada-Reno player Nicanora Clarke; Utah State’s Kaylie Ray; Macey Boggs, Sierra Grizzle and Jordan Sandy of the Wyoming team; Katelyn Van Kirk and Kiersten Van Kirk of Boise State; San Jose coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, and Nevada-Reno player Sia Liilii.

Defendants are the conference, commissioner Gloria Nevarez, San Jose State, its trustees, and the school’s head coach, athletic director and media relations director.

The report includes that the allegations state in September, as schools were canceling games against San Jose over the safety issue, the conference “authored a rule saying those cancellations would count as losses.”

The lawsuit charges, “The burgeoning controversy, which Commissioner Nevarez apparently believed could lead women’s volleyball players and teams to exercise their constitutional rights to protest and boycott, caused the commissioner and her staff to hastily draft and post on the MWC website a policy designed to penalize First Amendment protests supporting the rights of women’s volleyball players in the MWC.”

Further, it charges the conference plan “was clearly intended to chill and suppress the free speech rights of women athletes in the MWC.”

It charges that the rule was posted on Sept. 27, 2024, but then officials in the conference claimed it actually was adopted in 2022.

The report explained the rule contains a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy that schools don’t have to tell their opponents of the presence of a male on the women’s team.

The case charges violations of the First and 14th Amendments, fraud, the right to bodily privacy, discrimination, retaliation, viewpoint discrimination and more.

There have been previous legal actions started over the same issue.

Complete slap in the face to every single female athlete. Why is the @NCAA pretending that it is “fair” for biological men to compete against women?

Just look at how hard and fast biological male Blaire Fleming from @SanJoseStateVB hits this ball – unfair AND dangerous. pic.twitter.com/wJQkYn1hfa

— Marsha Blackburn (@VoteMarsha) September 12, 2024

Also, a governor has joined the conversation:

I applaud @BoiseState for working within the spirit of my Executive Order, the Defending Women’s Sports Act. We need to ensure player safety for all of our female athletes and continue the fight for fairness in women’s sports. pic.twitter.com/5cKzzTvSbw

— Brad Little (@GovernorLittle) September 27, 2024

The Cowboy State Daily reported, “U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican and Wyoming’s only delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, voiced support for UW’s ultimate decision in a Tuesday statement.”

“I am proud of UW volleyball standing up to this nonsense,” wrote Hageman. “We must do what it takes to protect our girls! I hope everyone will go support the team this season.”

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon also voiced support of the decision, saying, “It is important we stand for integrity and fairness in female athletics.”

Lawmakers in that state warned their school: “The Legislature has been very clear that the University of Wyoming, being a publicly funded land grant institution, should not participate in the extremist agenda of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or propagate the lie that biological sex can be changed. We all know it cannot.”