The San Jose State volleyball team is set to compete in one of the most unprecedented college tournaments in women’s sports history this week.
The Spartans will compete in Las Vegas for the Mountain West Tournament, and all eyes will be on senior Blaire Fleming. Fleming’s participation in the tournament this week was in question after an emergency hearing in Colorado, when plaintiffs, including Fleming’s teammate Brooke Slusser, contested that Fleming should be excluded from this year’s tournament on the basis of being a biological male.
However, Fleming is in the clear after a federal judge ruled that the athlete will be allowed to play. With Fleming on the court, the tournament is bound to be at the center of national political discourse over the consequences of trans inclusion in women’s sports.
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The situation involving Fleming and Slusser became a national scandal, highlighting an issue that became a deep vulnerability for Democrat candidates leading up to the November election.
The story of Slusser, Fleming and the discourse that rippled throughout the country will come to a head in Las Vegas. Here is how it got there.
January 2021
President Biden, hours after assuming office, issued an executive order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.” (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
On Jan. 20, 2021, just hours after President Biden assumed office, he issued an executive order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”
This order included a section that read, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”
It was just the first in many steps taken by the Biden administration and Democrat lawmakers at the congressional and state level that enabled a sudden wave of trans athletes to compete as girls and women in the U.S. during the current president’s term.
It set a clear precedent for Biden’s entire party on what the baseline stance on trans inclusion in girls’ and women’s sports would be.
Summer 2022
Fleming came to the Bay Area as a transfer ahead of the 2022 season. Fleming, a Virginia native, transferred from Coastal Carolina as one of the top players in the transfer portal. Fleming previously set a single-game record at John Champe High School with 30 kills in a match in 2019 and a single-season record of 266 kills for the school’s girls’ volleyball team.
Footage from the athlete’s Hudl page of the school-record 30-kill match in September 2019 shows how hard and fast Fleming’s spikes came down at the high school level against girl opponents.
Blaire Fleming plays against Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on Oct. 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
According to testimony by former San Jose State assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose in a…
Read More: SJSU transgender volleyball scandal: Timeline of allegations, political
