After it was revealed that a trans student played on the women’s volleyball team at one of the conference’s universities, a group of over a dozen Republican lawmakers is calling on a collegiate athletic conference to prohibit transgender women from participating.
Republican senators and representatives accused the NCAA Division I conference of breaking Title IX’s sex discrimination safeguards and failing to comply with its own handbook’s gender equity criteria in a letter addressed Monday to the Mountain West Conference’s commissioner.
According to the letter, allowing biological men to participate in women’s sports is unfair and unequal. According to these rules, it makes sense for biological males to participate in men’s sports and females in women’s sports.
It goes on to say that the Mountain West Conference has obviously made a mistake.
Republicans from three of the states where the conference schools are located comprise the group of lawmakers: Representatives John Curtis, Blake Moore, Burgess Owens, and Celeste Maloy and Senators Mitt Romney and Mike Lee of Utah; Senators Mike Crapo and James Risch and Representatives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson of Idaho; and Senator John Barrasso and Representative Cynthia Lummis and Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming.
Although neither San Jose State University nor the athlete are specifically mentioned in the letter, the lawmakers’ plea comes after months of controversy around the gender identity of a member of the women’s volleyball team. SJSU has not acknowledged that one of their players is transgender, and the player—whom NBC News is not naming—has never made public statements.
SJSU volleyball player Brooke Slusser joined a complaint filed in September against the NCAA, the organization that regulates collegiate athletics, over trans athletes’ participation in school sports, along with over a dozen other female athletes. The lawsuit contends that by permitting transgender women to compete against cisgender female athletes, the NCAA infringed upon their Title IX rights. Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer who caused controversy when she participated in the 2022 national women’s swimming championships, is the main subject of the lawsuit. Thomas was a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania.
Slusser and ten other Mountain West Conference athletes, both past and present, filed a separate lawsuit against the conference and three SJSU employees just last week, alleging that they had violated the players’ Title IX rights.
After initial rumors of a transgender player surfaced, at least five women’s collegiate volleyball teams—including those from Utah State collegiate, the University of Wyoming, Boise State University, the University of Nevada, and Southern Utah University—started to forfeit games to SJSU.
A spokesperson for SJSU, Michelle Smith McDonald, stated on Wednesday that the school’s players are allowed to compete in accordance with the Mountain West Conference and NCAA regulations.
In an email, she stated, “We continue to be concerned about the implications of using our students for political purposes, and we abhor that.” We are dedicated to creating a welcoming and supportive atmosphere for our student athletes, and we will keep taking steps to protect our students as they pursue their well-earned chances to compete.
In recent weeks, multiple attempts for comment from the SJSU player at the center of the disagreement have gone unanswered.
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