Women's volleyball co-captain opens up about lawsuit over transgender player
San Jose State University's women's volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser says she is standing up for herself and her team on 'The Ingraham Angle' as sports journalist Michele Tafoya reacts.
A girls' cross country runner at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, delivered an impassioned plea to her school board on Thursday amid an ongoing controversy over a trans athlete on her team.
The 16-year-old high school student, Rylee Morrow, addressed a recent lawsuit by her teammates alleging that their "Save Girls Sports" T-shirts were likened to a swastika by school officials. The plaintiffs had worn the shirts after a transgender athlete, who hadn’t consistently attended practices or met key varsity eligibility requirements, was placed on the varsity team, displacing one of the girls from her spot, the complaint alleged.
Athletic department school officials allegedly then forced the students to remove or conceal the shirts, claiming they created a "hostile" environment and comparing wearing these shirts to wearing a swastika in front of Jewish students.
Morrow spoke at a Riverside Unified School District board meeting on Thursday, lambasting her school officials and the notion that trans athletes should be allowed to compete in women's sports.
"I'm constantly affected by the actions taken place this season, and I have been around the females, and just my team in general, who have felt almost silenced to speak out about it, because the whole LGBTQ is shoved down our throats!" Morrow said.
"We live in a society where it's almost impossible to speak out on it without facing repercussions."
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Morrow said she had even approached the school's athletic director herself about the situation. She went on to passionately defend her teammates who filed the lawsuit amid comparisons of their messaging to swastikas.
"It feels as though that my school and the school district is choosing to support one person instead of the whole team," Morrow said. "To see the athletic director turn around and tell my teammates that their shirts that say, ‘Save girl's sports' be compared to a swastika, that is not okay. These girls feel silenced, they felt silenced, and when they finally did something to speak out against it . . . they were completely stabbed in the back."
Morrow concluded her testimony by expressing how "unsafe" the entire situation has made her feel as a girls' athlete being forced to share a locker room with a biological male.
"It is not okay that I have to be in position, and I have to see a male in booty shorts, and having to see that around me, as a 16-year-old girl I don't see that as a safe environment," Morrow said. "Going into a locker room and seeing males in there, I don't find that safe, I don't find going to the bathroom safe when there's guys in there. It's not okay. I'm a 16-year-old girl!"
The two girls who have filed the lawsuit, known as Kaitlyn and Taylor, previously told Fox News Digital how difficult the situation has been.
"My initial reaction was like, I was really surprised, because it was like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’" Taylor said. "There's a transgender student on the team. Why am I getting displaced when "I've worked so hard and gone to all of the practices, and this student has only attended a few of the practices."
The shock of having their shirts compared to swastikas was unexpected to them.
"It was definitely hard to hear because we're by no means trying to be hateful," Kaitlyn said. "We're just wearing a shirt that expresses what we believe in trying to raise awareness to a situation."
Martin Luther King High School is just one of many public education institutions in California that is currently embroiled in a controversy over a trans athlete on a girls' or women's sports team.
Stone Ridge Christian High School's girls' volleyball team was scheduled to face San Francisco Waldorf in the Northern California Division 6 tournament but forfeited in an announcement just before the match over the presence of a trans athlete on the team last week.
A transgender volleyball player was booed and harassed at an Oct. 12 match between Notre Dame Belmont in Belmont, California, against Half Moon Bay High School, according to ABC 7. Half Moon Bay rostered the transgender athlete.
In response to complaints of boos and harassment, athletic director Steve Sell of Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, intervened. In his capacity as co-chair of the Peninsula Athletic League Athletic Directors, Sell informed Notre Dame that there could be consequences, according to ABC 7.
Meanwhile, at the college level, San Jose State's volleyball team has been at the center of a national media firestorm over the presence of a transgender athlete on the team and a teammate being involved in multiple lawsuits over the issue.
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San Jose State women's co-captain Brooke Slusser has joined a lawsuit against the NCAA and filed her own lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference and her own school alleging she was deceived about the natural birth sex of her teammate, Blaire Fleming, who is a biological male.
The two have continued to play together this season amid the ongoing controversy but have had seven matches on their schedule forfeited. San Jose State will compete in the Mountain West tournament, but a ruling from a Biden-appointed judge after an emergency hearing in Colorado on Thursday could prevent that from happening.
A Mountain West spokesperson said it is possible for San Jose State to win the championship if opponents forfeit upcoming tournament games in Las Vegas starting Nov. 27. But federal Judge Kato Crews will deliver a judgment on whether that plan will stand or not, or whether the team and transgender player may even compete.
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