Ex-SJSU volleyball coach reacts after Trump admin rules school violated Title IX with trans athlete handling

Former San Jose State assistant volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose and her attorney Vernadette Broyles respond to the Department of Education's determination that the university violated Title IX in its handling of a trans athlete.

Nearly one year after Melissa Batie-Smoose slipped into unemployment after San Jose State University did not renew her contract as an assistant volleyball coach, she can watch the institution face consequences from the federal government. 

Batie-Smoose rose to fame in the "Save Women's Sports" movement when she filed a Title IX complaint against the university for its handling of transgender athlete Blaire Fleming, in the fall of 2024. Her complaint included the first public allegations that Fleming conspired with an opposing player to have SJSU volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser spiked in the face during a match. 

She was suspended from the program, and later not brought back, and she hasn't been able to find work in her field since. 

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Associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose with the San Jose St. Spartans as they play Air Force in an NCAA women’s volleyball game at Spartan Gym in San Jose, California, on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

But Batie-Smoose enjoyed a moment of victory on Wednesday when she learned that the U.S. Department of Education determined that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of Fleming.

"Personally, it was a big win," Batie-Smoose told Fox News Digital. "It was nice to hear something that we knew all along, right, that we were being violated in the things that the female athletes and myself went through. But this is a big win today."

But now, she wants to