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. 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. 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.