Natalia Navarro: [00:01:53] Yeah, it was just a volleyball game for the most part.
Speaker 1: [00:01:58] Natalia Navarro is a news anchor for KQED.
Natalia Navarro: [00:02:02] I hadn’t been to a volleyball game in a really long time, so I was surprised, like how exciting it was. It’s a very, like fast paced game.
Natalia Navarro: [00:02:16] When I went it was San Jose State playing University of New Mexico. And it was just exciting. There were really they’re both making points. It was really cool. There are a good amount of spectators there. You know, people’s parents and other students. And for the most part, it looked like any other game. There were some security people there sort of escorting players around and like making sure that people didn’t go in this one area where the players were. There were several students there holding signs in support of the team. There was one protester who was holding a sign that said Protect women’s Sports to oppose the fact that this team was playing with all of its players there. But other than that, it was it was a normal college sports game.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:03:14] Which is really interesting because that is different from how it seems like the rest of the country is talking about San Jose State right now. And I want to talk about how that all started. I mean, the person who really thrust the team into the spotlight was San Jose State’s volleyball team, co-captain Brooke Slusser. Who is Brooke Slusser?
Natalia Navarro: [00:03:41] Yeah, she’s like you said, one of the co-captains of the team. She’s played on San Jose State for a couple of years. She played at a different college before that. So at some point earlier this year, Brooke Slusser, according to her court documents, here’s rumors that one of her teammates is trans. According to these documents, she’s really confused and upset about this information, but mostly keeps it to herself until an article comes out on an opinion site about this player. And then they have a conversation and which, according to Brooke, this player tells her that she’s trans. And Brooke says that she doesn’t want the player to be bullied but doesn’t think that she should be playing on the team. Brooks-lasure was reached out to by this group called Icons. It stands for Independent Counsel on Women’s Sports. They’re essentially an anti-trans advocacy group who is funding Reilly Gaines lawsuit against the NCAA to try to keep trans players out of the NCAA. A rally gains as a former college swimmer and now an anti-trans advocate. And so they approached Brooke Slusser and brought her in as an additional plaintiff on this lawsuit. And she, you know, told the court that her teammate is trans.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:05:12] So this happened in September, right? When Slusser joined this already existing lawsuit brought forward first by a former college swimmer named Riley Gaines. What is this lawsuit about exactly? What is it, I guess ultimately seeking to do?
Natalia Navarro: [00:05:31] The overall relief that they are seeking is really quite broad. The lawsuit is seeking to ban trans athletes from college sports, trying to get the court to agree that including them violates Title nine, which is the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex and educational settings. Also to go back into the history of things and rescind any records or wins from trans athletes. It will require sex verification to make sure there are no trans athletes playing. This would really change how Title nine is being used in in terms of trans bans and stuff like that in courts. Right now, courts have allowed a lot of states to ban trans people from sports. What this would do if this went the way of the plaintiffs is it would say not only can they ban trans people from sports, they actually have to.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:06:39] And I mean, why exactly did Slusser get involved in this lawsuit in the first place? What does she say about her teammates specifically?
Natalia Navarro: [00:06:49] I reached out to her to talk about this. You never go back to me, but she did talk on Megan Kelley’s podcast. She’s talk on Fox.
Brooke Slusser: [00:06:58] Everything in my body was like, this is so wrong. It’s not fair. It shouldn’t be happening.
Natalia Navarro: [00:07:04] She says that her teammate, who she says is trans, is more physically imposing than her, her fellow teammates, that she just has an unbeatable power that puts her and her teammates at risk of injury.
Brooke Slusser: [00:07:20] Again, the power behind this swing is just so different. And if you’re not completely prepared for it, you will get blown up. And that’s the scariest part, because that could end your career.
Natalia Navarro: [00:07:31] She’s saying that, you know, having a player that was born male makes it unfair for her and also dangerous for her and her teammates.
Brooke Slusser: [00:07:41] And so I think at the end of the day, I just got so far up, I was like, I want to be able to make this change for other people coming into collegiate sports.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:07:48] I mean, Slusser is alleging, first of all, that she has a trans teammate. But has this teammate said anything publicly about this or her gender identity?
Natalia Navarro: [00:07:59] So your listeners will notice that we are not saying her name, and that’s because she hasn’t said anything publicly about her gender identity. San Jose State has not provided any information about her gender identity. They cite privacy laws and they have maintained that all of their players meet NCAA, a Mountain West Conference rules and that’s all they will say about it.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:08:24] But we do know who she is.
Natalia Navarro: [00:08:27] Yes, we do know who she is. Her name has been very much out there. The lawsuits and the articles on conservative sites that Brooke Slusser and others have commented on frequently use him pronouns for this player and generally talk pretty directly about her physicality, etc.. We’re not doing that, but it’s definitely out there.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:08:56] I mean, what do we know about whether Brooke’s allegations are, in fact, true? Like, does this player have any clear physical advantages compared to her teammates?
Natalia Navarro: [00:09:08] It seems like no. This player has played for San Jose State for a couple of years, has played at a previous university, and there were no problems that I could find. One of the things that Brooke Slusser and others have said is that, you know, she’s she’s so physically imposing and yet she’s about six one. I looked at the roster for the team and more than half a dozen of the players on that team are above six feet. Volleyball players on the whole are usually quite tall. She’s not even the tallest one on San Jose State University’s team. I talked to a lot of experts who deal with inclusion in sports and who, you know, have read the science and they say that there is no evidence that there is any sort of universal advantage that trans women have in sports, especially once they’ve transitioned medically. Oftentimes, trans women have lower testosterone levels than cisgender women.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:10:18] According to Slusser, her teammates spikes the ball as fast as 80mph, which would make her as strong as some of the best men’s players ever. But ESPN analyzed the speed of the teammates spikes in five different games, including ones that went viral. ESPN found that the average speed of those spikes was just over 50mph, and the fastest was estimated at 64mph.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:10:54] So, Natalia, I mean, how do trans women join a college sports team? Are there special rules that they have to follow in order to qualify?
Natalia Navarro: [00:11:04] Yeah, there are. In terms of the NCAA, who manages most college sports teams, their rules generally are that someone has to have medically transitioned, which usually means taking of hormones like like testosterone or estrogen, usually. And they have to have been on that for a certain amount of time. The rules are pretty complicated and spread out to various things for various different sports. But generally, those who have medically transitioned can join sports. Sometimes that means the NCAA will require them to do particular hormone checks throughout the year. But current NCAA rules say that they can play in the sport that aligns with their gender identity.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:11:50] Yeah, I mean, and how many people are we actually talking about? How many trans players are actually participating right now in college sports? What do we know about that?
Natalia Navarro: [00:11:58] Overall, trans people are a really small portion of the American population. And trans athletes are even smaller portion of that small portion. And the ones that make it to the level of Division one, college sports, it’s kind of very small.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:12:17] So Brooke Slusser and the other people behind the lawsuit are basically arguing that the NCAA rules allowing trans athletes to play violate civil rights law, in particular, Title IX. What are the arguments around that? What have you heard?
Natalia Navarro: [00:12:34] Yeah. I reached out to the plaintiffs lawyers, Brooks Loesser’s, lawyers and others on the NCAA lawsuit, and none of them got back to me for comment. But from the lawsuit, basically they do say exactly that. They just say allowing trans people to play on women’s sports teams in itself violates Title IX.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:12:54] On the other hand, you did talk with people who disagree with that interpretation of Title IX, right?
Natalia Navarro: [00:13:00] Yeah, exactly.
Shiwali Patel: [00:13:02] This would just lead to an incredible marginalization of an already marginalized group.
Natalia Navarro: [00:13:08] I talked to a lawyer at the National Women’s Law Center show, Shiwali Patel. She’s a title IX expert, and she had not great things to say about this lawsuit.
Shiwali Patel: [00:13:20] Title IX can’t be used to justify exclusion of a vulnerable group of students from equal educational opportunities based on how they look or play or who they are. What these plaintiffs are seeking to do is to really turn Title nine on its head and to remove it from its purpose of equal educational opportunity.
Natalia Navarro: [00:13:39] She says that this is not really doing anything to protect women’s sports. There’s a lot less access to facilities. There is a lot less funding, there’s a lot less research in order to to prevent injury. Like there’s a lot of stuff here that needs to be done in terms of protecting women in sports. And she says that none of that has anything to do with kicking trans people out of it.
Shiwali Patel: [00:14:06] There are well-documented actual issues when it comes to gender inequity in sport that if they were to put their resources and time into that, they could be fighting to achieve gender equity. This is not one of them, you know, and trying to exclude trans women and girls from women and girls sports.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:14:23] I know you talked to people who think that banning trans women from sports is part of this larger effort to restrict LGBTQ rights more broadly. What do you hear from people you spoke to about that?
Natalia Navarro: [00:14:36] I talked to Erin Reid, who is an independent journalist who covers anti-trans legislation all over the country. And she had a really interesting thought about this, that it really isn’t about any sort of particular advantage, that it’s just about discrimination.
Erin Reed: [00:14:56] To be clear, you know, we are seeing bans not just in, you know, heavy impact sports, but we’re also seeing bans on transgender athletes and sports like chess and darts and fishing.
Natalia Navarro: [00:15:10] And she thought that it was interesting that this is folk focusing on sports because she mentioned that she has heard from conservative pundits that sports is actually an easy way to get people who are against the LGBTQ community. It’s an easy entry point for them to start talking about trans issues.
Erin Reed: [00:15:34] And many of the same states that started with transgender participation in sports, in fact, not just many. Virtually all of the states, with the exception of Alaska, have gone on to pass gender affirming caravans for trans youth, have gone on to pass other bills like don’t say gay, don’t say trans. We see book bans.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:15:51] I mean, I can’t imagine. What the last few months must have been like for the San Jose State volleyball team. I mean, how often did this issue come up for San Jose State this season?
Natalia Navarro: [00:16:06] It was kind of a constant. Several universities forfeited their games against San Jose State and that’s part of what made the news so big because they refused to play the team.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:16:21] And to be clear, these teams were forfeiting in protest of this teammate that Slusser alleges is trans. Right.
Natalia Navarro: [00:16:29] That’s, I think, a safe assumption. But we don’t know that for sure. Most of the the universities have not said that per se.
Sia Li’ili’i: [00:16:40] At the beginning of this season, brave women across our conference were meeting with their coaches and school administration, telling them that they would not play against San Jose State
Natalia Navarro: [00:16:49] But for example, in in the case of the University of Nevada, Reno, several of the players from that team attended a rally put on by icons, which is that anti-trans organization that’s funding the lawsuit against the NCAA and spoke about the fact that they are against this supposedly trans player being a part of the team.
Sia Li’ili’i: [00:17:12] I never expected to be blindsided having to compete against a male athlete. I will continue to fight for my friends, my family, and the next generation of female athletes. All female athletes deserve to be protected at every level and every age. This is unfair and it has to be stopped.
Natalia Navarro: [00:17:36] The team while having a obviously a very tough season. And I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be on that team right now. I’m sure that the conversations that are happening are really hard. But they were able to make it to the postseason. And just this past week, they played at the Mountain West Conference tournament and had another high profile forfeit from Boise State. But that got them into the into the final match against Colorado. And they did lose that match, but they made it all the way.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:18:14] What if folks from the team said about what this season has been like for them? I mean, sponsor other teammates, the coaches? Have they said anything publicly about what this season has been like?
Natalia Navarro: [00:18:25] You know, the whole team has been pretty tight lipped about this. I get the sense that they’re being told by the university and maybe probably by legal advisers at the university to not say anything publicly. So I did not get any responses to my questions about these things from players and from coaches. They were never available after games to talk. Brooks-lasure has talked about, obviously the the lawsuit itself, but we don’t have that much of an insight into what the daily life is and what the daily practices are like for this team. If you took away all of the context and you were just watching them play, I don’t think you would really know that all of this stuff was going on because the two players, Brooks Lesser and the teammate that she says is trans, that she is in court trying to get out of her team. They are playing right next to each other and they’re, you know, for doing pretty well. They won the game. But I went to go see.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:19:33] San Jose State’s women’s volleyball season has ended, right? It ended last week.
Natalia Navarro: [00:19:40] Yes.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:19:41] But how do you think this story could still have ripple effects even beyond San Jose State?
Natalia Navarro: [00:19:47] Yeah, I think it is really much bigger than San Jose State. And when we’re talking about sort of trickle down effects of this this sort of lawsuit and this sort of larger political conversation about trans people in sports, is that it can affect people of all gender identities. We could talk about the Olympics this past summer and the Algerian boxer, Amani Khalifa, who is a cisgender woman who people sort of decided, maybe she’s trans. And it became this whole thing. Another example is the situation that happened in Utah, which does have a trans sports ban in place. There was a girl playing high school sports and someone on the athletics association and in relation to the school thought that she was trans. And then there was this whole investigation into this child’s gender, unbeknownst to her or her parents. It can really be a problem where we’re now people are sort of pointing fingers at people, young girls and women who maybe don’t fit gender stereotypes and and now have to somehow prove that they are who they say they are.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: [00:21:07] Natalia, thank you so much for walking us through this story. I really appreciate.
Natalia Navarro: [00:21:12] It. Thank you.
