By Hannah Nightingale – The Postmillennial
A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of former San Jose State University associate head volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose over her termination from her role after she advocated for keeping biological males out of women’s sports. In the 2024 season, the team made headlines after taking in repeated victories with trans-identified male Blaire Fleming on the team.
In October 2024, Batie-Smoose filed a complaint against SJSU, the Mountain West Conference, and the NCAA “alleging discrimination based on sex and retaliation in violation of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 regarding transgender eligibility policies.” She was suspended from her role on November 1, and was terminated on or around January 31, 2025.
Batie-Smoose had accepted an offer of employment from the board of trustees for the role at SJSU on March 1, 2024. The employment contract required that she “provide full support and abide by the CSU and SJSU commitment to gender equity in education, including athletics and its full compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” She “understood that equity referred to sex as set forth in Title IX.”
Batie-Smoose relocated her family across the US to California for the job, “with the understanding and expectation that she would be coaching a women’s collegiate volleyball team comprised of female athletes.” The lawsuit noted that she had not been informed at the time she took on the role by either the defendant or its agents that the then-head coach, Trent Kersten, “had actively recruited a male athlete, identifying as ‘transgender,’ to join the women’s volleyball team in 2022.”
“This omission was material to Plaintiff’s understanding of the position and to the integrity of the women’s volleyball program.”
She began noticing that one athlete in particular on the team “exhibited athletic abilities that were markedly different from the other players on the women’s volleyball team” and later learned that the player was transgender. In April 2024, around one month after accepting the role. Reduxx published a piece revealing that Blaire Fleming was a trans-identified male playing on the team. In the wake of the report, Fleming informed teammates of the player’s transgender status.
Batie-Smoose noted during her tenure that Head Coach Todd Kress “consistently provided preferential treatment to the male athlete, Blaire Fleming, over female student-athletes on the SJSU women’s volleyball team,” including allowing Fleming to play both indoor and beach volleyball over other female athletes despite never playing beach volleyball before, retaining a full scholarship despite missing multiple games to injury while another female athlete lost hers to injury, and being “routinely permitted to violate team rules without discipline.”
In October 2024, she filed the complaint against SJSU, shortly after which she was suspended. The defendant claimed that Batie-Smoose had “violated Fleming’s private information, despite the knowledge of his sex being well-published in the media, and confirmed and revealed by Fleming himself.”
In January 2025, she was terminated. “The stated or implied reason for Plaintiff’s termination was not related to her job performance or qualifications, but it was instead the contents of her personnel action file, which included her opposition to sex discrimination in the SJSU’s women’s volleyball program and her filing of a formal Title IX complaint to protect the rights of female athletes.”
“SJSU’s assertion that Plaintiff’s contract had expired is a pretext for her termination because SJSU’s non-renewal of her contract was motivated by her protected activity, was retaliatory, and constitutes an adverse employment action under both Title VII and Title IX. At all relevant times, [SJSU Administrator Laura] Alexander made it clear to the players and Plaintiff that they were not to discuss Blaire Fleming’s ‘transgender’ status outside of the team, that none of them had any recourse of having a male on the team, and that their scholarships could be lost.”
“Punishing coaches for raising concerns about the fairness and integrity of women’s sports not only harms the individual advocate but also undermines the enforcement of Title IX’s mandate and has a chilling effect on those who seek to protect sex equality in collegiate athletics, contrary to public policy and the statutory objectives of Title IX,” the lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division, stated.
The lawsuit has been filed against the Board of Trustees of the California State University on behalf of SJSU.
“Defendant’s actions in suspending and terminating Plaintiff were not based on her job performance but were in direct retaliation for her opposition to sex discrimination and her advocacy for the fairness and equal access to programs, services, and activities for female athletes. Defendant’s conduct constitutes unlawful employment discrimination based on sex and unlawful retaliation for engaging in protected activity, in violation of both Title VII and Title IX, and further undermines the statutory purpose of Title IX to protect and advance the rights of female athletes.”