Athletes challenge male competitor in women’s league

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 21st of November.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up today, female athletes take a stand for their rights.

A federal judge is scheduled to hear a case today involving the San Jose State University volleyball team. The women’s team includes a male player known as Blaire Fleming.

REICHARD: Several teams in the Mountain West Conference have refused to play SJSU this season because Fleming is playing. The conference counts those games as a win for SJSU and a loss for the forfeiting school.

WORLD’s Lindsay Mast talked to one of the players who took a loss and is part of the lawsuit.

LINDSAY MAST: University of Nevada-Reno senior Sia Liilii was an active kid. She played lots of sports, but she fell in love with volleyball. And she needed it, too.

LIILII: I come from a family of 11, so I knew I had to use sports to get an education. So luckily, U Nevada, Reno took a chance on me, and now I'm here.

She’s team captain at the NCAA Division I school this year. But her senior season took a turn after teams in the Mountain West Conference learned that a player on the San Jose State University team is male. He goes by the name Blaire Fleming. When word got out, some teams started to forfeit their games against the California school. They said they had concerns about fairness, opportunity and safety.

AUDIO: [Fleming…” *gasps* “…And Danielson on the receiving end of that one, she pops up, letting everyone know she’s all right.”]

Audio of a hit from Fleming that knocked down a player from the University of New Mexico during a game in October.

As teams started to bow out, The University of Nevada-Reno put out a statement saying their team would play San Jose State. Liilii says she and her teammates weren’t consulted. And when they went to the athletic director and objected

LIILII: Our AD took it in the way where it was, there are two sides to every story, and that we didn't educate ourselves. We didn't know the science behind it and why this person was allowed to invade in these women's spaces, which is pretty disheartening. A lot of us felt like silenced in that meeting because we were asked to reconsider our position.

Ultimately, Liilii says the school made them choose. After a different game in California, they could either get on a bus that was headed to San Jose State to play the game or get on a bus going home to Reno. 16 of the team’s 17 players boarded the bus for Reno. They were assigned a loss, but held a rally the night the game would’ve been played.

LIILII: We are educated enough and we do understand the difference between a male and a female athlete.

Now, Liilii is one of twelve plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit, which alleges Title IX and First Amendment violations. They represent five teams in the Mountain West Conference—and include some of Fleming’s teammates and a San Jose State associate head coach. Additionally, Utah State University filed a motion asking to join the lawsuit this week.

SLUSSER: It's sad that the school still chooses to prioritize one man's needs over an entire team and be willing to get rid of half of our season because of it.

That’s Brooke Slusser, another plaintiff in the suit. She is a co-captain of the San Jose State Team. The lawsuit alleges that the school hid the fact that Fleming is a man from Slusser and the rest of the team despite Slusser sharing rooms with Fleming, not knowing that he was male.

One of San Jose State’s associate head coaches was suspended after speaking out about the players’ safety concerns. Audio of Slusser again, from Fox News:

SLUSSER: She was that one person that everyone felt like they could voice their opinion and truly speak how they felt with the whole situation and feel comforted and them taking that away from us.

Representatives from San Jose State University and the Mountain West Conference both declined to comment.

Bill Bock is an attorney for the plaintiffs and says there’s also a religious component to the case.

BOCK: Brooke, you know, she has a right to privacy. She has a right not to have her body seen by a male, and it's not just a religious right, but it is a religious right because it's part of how she views herself because of her faith. But nobody should have to or be put in a position where they aren't told the truth, and then they find out later that they've exposed themselves to the opposite sex.

Liilii says as a competitor it’s been heartbreaking to take losses on games that were never played. And she says this isn’t about Fleming personally. But standing up matters to the girls and young women who expect an even playing field down the road.

LIILII: We're fighting for them, because that's what it's really about. It's the future of it, because they're trying to work hard enough to be in the position where they play D1 volleyball. But who knows if they'll even get that shot, because a man might take it from them.

Attorney Bill Bock again.

BOCK: These ladies are defenseless, and they're crying out to their administrators, and administrators are trying to get them to, you know, kind of, go into the battlefield and take this on and play, play the game when it's not fair.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast.

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