SJSU's Brooke Slusser Speaks Out On Fight Against NCAA: ‘Title IX Exists For A Reason’ | OUTKICK EXCLUSIVE
Last week, Brooke Slusser joined more than a dozen female athletes in suing the NCAA for Title IX violations. The starting setter and co-captain of SJSU women's volleyball team is a current teammate of Blaire Fleming, a trans-identifying male whose sex was hidden by the school for nearly two years.
The class-action lawsuit, originally filed in March and funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), states that the NCAA has knowingly violated Title IX by allowing transgender athletes to compete against women and to use women's locker rooms in collegiate sports.
The San Jose State women's volleyball team, which has transgender player Blaire Fleming (#3), is undefeated on the season.
(San Jose State University Athletics)
In an exclusive interview with OutKick, Slusser said team dynamics have certainly gotten "awkward" since she joined the lawsuit but that she knows she's doing the right thing.
"It's crazy to say, but it was an easy decision for me to join because it's something I truly believe in," Slusser said. "And it's been easy because all the support that I'm getting — 99% of it is just love and encouragement. So, for me, it shows that I made the right decision to join. This is something that so many people do care about. It's just that so many people are scared to talk about it."
Fleming, a redshirt senior, previously played at Coastal Carolina University and has played on the SJSU women's team for the past three seasons. As OutKick reported in April, the school initially hid the fact that the 6-foot-1 outside hitter was born a male and withheld that fact from Slusser as well.
Brooke Slusser: SJSU Kept Us In The Dark About Blaire Fleming
Upon transferring to SJSU from Alabama in the Fall of 2023, Slusser began sharing a residence with four of her teammates, including Fleming. She was also assigned to room with Fleming, who specifically requested her, on team road trips. At no point during her recruitment, nor during the 2023 season, was Slusser informed that a male athlete was on the team.
"It was a really hard pill to swallow, because I couldn't comprehend the fact that there was a man on the team, and it was almost as if I was in denial for a really long time that this was happening," Slusser said. "So it was just really hard for me to wrap my head around.
"And then, it still being a topic we weren't really allowed to talk about. It was just kind of whispers behind closed doors that this is what's happening, but no one's really talked about it or addressed it."
Once Slusser and her teammates became aware of Fleming's biological sex, the SJSU athletic department discouraged them from speaking about the issue publicly. Essentially, the school laid a guilt trip on the volleyball players, suggesting it was their responsibility to protect their male teammate from public scrutiny.
"It was more so the school only supporting Blaire, and they didn't really seem to want to check in on us," Slusser explained. "Basically, 'You shouldn't be the person to identify Blaire's gender identity. That's something that Blaire needs to do, and not you. That's not your story to tell.'
"But we all have a story, too. This isn't just something that Blaire's going through. This is something that I'm going through, too, and my teammates. I have so many emotions and questions, and I don't know how to voice them."
SJSU continued to hide the information, even from student-athletes who joined the team in 2024. Slusser said by the time new recruits found out about their male teammate, it was too late for them to transfer, and they felt they had been misled.
"I feel for those girls so much, because if I had known, it would have been a completely different story for me and where I ended up when I was in my transfer process," Slusser said. "But I couldn't even imagine being a 17-year-old girl so excited to come to college and play D1 volleyball, and then two weeks before you're supposed to get here, you find this out."
SJSU Volleyball Is Having A Historic Year
The Spartans started the season with a program-best 10-0 record and have dropped only five sets out of the 30+ that they’ve played all year. Fleming has the second-most total kills on the team (119) and kills per set rate (3.72).
Slusser said that while she did not want Fleming to be bullied, she was uncomfortable with the trans athlete's presence on the team. She questioned whether it was safe or fair for the other women on the team and for their opponents.
And some opposing teams share that concern.
Earlier this month, Southern Utah informed officials at the Santa Clara Tournament that they did not want to compete against SJSU, and their scheduled game was canceled. And just this past weekend, Boise State chose to forfeit its own match against the Spartans.
Last week, the Mountain West Conference, which hosts SJSU, was alerted by ICONS about growing concern for female athletes’ safety and hesitancy to compete against Fleming because of apparent physical advantages posed by a male competing against women.
Slusser is aware, too, of the mounting pressure for her and her teammates to boycott playing with Fleming. But the situation for her and other SJSU athletes is not that simple.
"It's definitely something that I thought about really hard. And I think the hardest part about the whole situation is that this team really loves each other. My best friends are on this team," she explained. "Just having to go through this breaks me, because the team is full of such loving, caring women, and to put them all through this is absolutely absurd.
"I might only have three months left ever of playing volleyball. I already used my transfer, so I can't transfer again. It was either I walk away from volleyball forever or I kind of swallow this hard pill, suck it up and play, do what I can for my team and protect them any way I can."
Brooke Slusser Joins ICONS Lawsuit To Fight For Future Female Athletes
Slusser acknowledges that this lawsuit against the NCAA might not ensure immediate, sweeping changes. But she chose to speak out now so that, hopefully, female athletes in the future won't have to.
"If I have daughters and I had to sit there and watch them play against a male player, or be on a team with a male player, and knowing that I could have done something about it and didn't, I think that would be a really hard situation for me to end up in," Slusser said. "So it's not even about me, personally. It's about making a change for the little girls who are going to be playing sports for all the years to come and being able to protect them."
Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines testifies during a hearing focused on the Biden administration's proposed rule changes to Title IX to redefine the definition of sexual discrimination to include gender identity.
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Slusser joins 12-time All-American swimmer and OutKick host Riley Gaines, Olympian Reka Gyorgy, two-time NCAA champion Kylee Alons and 15 other female athletes involved in the lawsuit. They're hoping to preserve the original intent of Title IX and to ensure sex-based protections for girls and women in sports for years to come.
"It's about so many other people than just us and the people who are going through it right now, and that's why I think it's so amazing that so many girls have been able to join this lawsuit," Slusser said. "Because it's not just fighting to protect themselves, but it's being able to protect everyone in the future — every little girl that's going to grow up and play volleyball and their daughters, too, one day."