Former San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser called Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of states protecting women’s sports the “biggest win” female athletes have had yet.
Slusser appeared on Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus” after the high court ruled 6-3 in favor of West Virginia and Idaho in two landmark transgender athlete cases. The ruling upheld state laws requiring student-athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their biological sex at birth rather than their gender identity.
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For Slusser, who became one of the most prominent voices in the fight to protect women’s sports after speaking out about a transgender player on her volleyball team in 2024, the decision was deeply personal.
“I mean, it’s amazing,” Slusser told Harris Faulkner. “It’s the biggest win we’ve had yet, so I couldn’t be happier. We couldn’t ask for more right now.”
Slusser filed a lawsuit last year over her experience at SJSU, where she said she was not told that teammate Blaire Fleming was transgender despite sharing team spaces, including hotel rooms, locker rooms and living quarters.
“I found out from other student-athletes at the university, so it wasn’t even the institution itself that informed us, which makes it even worse,” Slusser said. “My whole team had to find out on their own through other student-athletes.”
Slusser said the issue was not limited to competition. She argued that female athletes were deprived of the ability to make informed decisions about their own privacy and comfort in intimate spaces.
“It’s taking away the student-athlete’s choice to choose which safe spaces they’re in,” she said. “You’re going into locker rooms, or for my situation, my living space, and being told these are all women, thinking I’m comfortable doing whatever I need to be doing, changing and getting dressed where I want to. And then I found out the whole time that I’ve been sharing hotel rooms, locker rooms, my living space with a man.”
Slusser continued, “They’re stripping me of my choice to basically choose where I want to get ready and who I am getting ready around. That’s the biggest issue. It’s not even just about safety in the sport as well, it’s about everything else that goes into it.”
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The SJSU volleyball controversy became one of the most high-profile examples in the debate over trans-identifying athletes in women’s sports. Multiple Mountain West teams forfeited matches against San Jose State during that season amid concerns about Fleming’s participation.
Slusser told Faulkner that even as Fleming’s teammate, she still had concerns about the physical differences in practice.
“I just had to practice with him. I wasn’t even playing against him in a real game,” Slusser said. “So the bare minimum, at least I got to know his tendencies so I could keep myself a little bit safer. But even then, I’m still getting slammed in my body. I had bruises on my legs from getting hit with a ball.”
She added that opponents were put in an even worse position because they didn’t have the same familiarity before stepping on the court.
“These other teams don’t know what they’re walking into,” Slusser said. “That’s even worse than what I had to go through going into practice every single day, trying to keep myself safe.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox gives states the authority to maintain separate women’s and girls’ sports categories based on biological sex. The decision is a major victory for advocates who have argued that Title IX was designed to protect female athletes, not force them to compete against biological males.
Slusser said San Jose State failed its female athletes by prioritizing Fleming over the rest of the roster.
“The fact that they allowed these student-athletes that were men pretending to be women be protected under those Title IX rules that were meant for women to be protected in is the biggest fault that happened,” Slusser said. “My institution itself, SJSU, they decided to protect a man and not worry about the 18 other women that should have been protected as well.”
Slusser also referenced former high school volleyball player Payton McNabb, who suffered serious injuries after being hit in the face by a spike from a transgender opponent in 2022.
“This could ruin people’s lives, not even just in athletics, but overall,” Slusser said. “Payton McNabb will never be the same from what happened to her, and that’s what we’re trying to stop.”
For Slusser and other women who have fought this battle publicly, Tuesday’s ruling marks a legal victory that’s been a long time coming.
And for the states that passed laws protecting women’s sports, the Supreme Court has now made clear they have the constitutional authority to enforce them.
