A federal judge in Colorado is taking heat after ruling that a transgender college volleyball player will be permitted to continue playing in women’s sports into the coming Mountain West Conference tournament.
Federal Judge Kato Crews, who was appointed to the bench by Joe Biden nearly a year ago, denied a motion for injunctive relief that sought to have San Jose State University player Blaire Fleming disqualified from the tournament. Crews ruled that Fleming can remain with SJSU’s volleyball team, Fox News reported.
The judge ruled that the litigants seeking to exclude Fleming did not “meet their burden to show irreparable harm, a likelihood of success on the merits, or that the balance of harms or equities is in their favor.” Crews also insisted that removing Fleming now as the tournament is just preparing to kick off is “not reasonable.”
Crews claimed that removing Fleming now “would risk confusion and upend months of planning and would prejudice, at a minimum, (San Jose State) and other teams participating in the tournament.”
One request the filers had was to force the Mountain West Conference to vacate the game forfeits from the five college teams that had refused to play SJSU due to its inclusion of Fleming on its team. Because of those forfeits, SJSU is the No. 2 seed team in the conference. But Judge Crews said that changing things now would cause chaos in the standings that sent SJSU to No. 2. And that, he said, would not be fair or reasonable.
SJSU hailed the decision as a vindication of its decision to add Fleming to the women’s team without alerting teammates that Fleming was a male identifying as a woman and forcing the conference to play against him during the season.
“San Jose State University will continue to support its student-athletes and reject discrimination in all forms. All San Jose State University student-athletes are eligible to participate in their sports under NCAA and Mountain West Conference rules,” SJSU told Fox News.
“We are gratified that the Court rejected an eleventh-hour attempt to change those rules. Our team looks forward to competing in the Mountain West volleyball tournament this week,” the school added.
Detractors of the Biden-appointed judge’s ruling quickly filled social media with discontent:
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