Brooke Slusser remembers the day she moved into “the villa.”
It was a four-bedroom apartment in San Jose, California with white walls and no decorations. Her mom and dad drove her and all of her things there, all the way from Texas.
She was the first tenant to show up that semester.
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Slusser was about to begin her junior year, as a transfer from Alabama, to play her 2023 college volleyball season for SJSU and head coach Todd Kress.
Slusser alleged Kress is the one who encouraged her to live in that apartment. At the time, there were two apartments filled with SJSU volleyball players that were looking for one more tenant on the lease, she claims.
But Kress allegedly told Slusser to move into “the villa” because he thought she would “get along better” with the women in that unit, she claimed.
Slusser lived in the blank-white-walled apartment by herself for her first two days in San Jose. She experienced her first up-close exposure to a homeless man, and witnessed a convention of cosplayers wearing animal costumes, called “furries.”
On day three, Blaire Fleming walked in.
“He was the first person I met when I got on campus, and we were together, just the two of us, I want to say for the first day or two, after he got there until any of my other roommates showed up,” Slusser told Fox News Digital.
At the time, Slusser had no idea Fleming was transgender. She had no idea they would eventually end up on opposite sides of a national culture war.
Over the course of that school year in “the villa,” Slusser shared many things with Fleming. They shared laughs, parties, food, germs, gossip and even secrets. Slusser, now regretfully, said she shared her deep personal family trauma with Fleming in moments of vulnerability.
And Slusser said she still hasn’t even mentally processed one of the most regretful things she shared with Fleming back then.
“You find out you’re just chilling in a bed with a man that you have no idea about… I [was] unknowingly sharing a bed at that time with a man,” she said.
“It’s hard to process. I don’t even know if I can say I’ve fully processed it to this day. It’s just, you’re told something for so long, you think something for so long and you act very normally about a situation, and then come to find out it’s all a lie.”
Sometimes, the other teammates living in the house would all climb into bed with them, to watch movies or just talk, Slusser said. But other times Slusser said it was just her and Fleming.
“Watching movies snuggled up in bed, like, all the normal things you’d think girls do in an apartment, like, my bathroom is across the hall from my bedroom and I’m going back and forth and everyone’s out doing their thing, and I probably would have covered up more,” Slusser said.
“I would have changed everything about what I was doing in that apartment if I would have known that it was a man. So it’s just hard to fully say I can grasp all of that when it was almost two years of me living with this situation.”
About two months living together, Slusser said she began to share personal secrets with Fleming and the other teammates in the apartment.
“There was a time when one of our roommates was kind of struggling with something, and I just opened up with all of us in the living room talking about what I’ve been through with my family, and how there’s a better side to things, and it gets better, and I’ve probably only told only two people in my life about what had happened back home in Texas, so opening up about that was just very vulnerable,” Slusser said.
With Fleming around for that conversation, Slusser said she put sensitive information in the hands of someone who she wished she hadn’t shared it with.
Slusser said the person she holds most responsible for causing it to happen is Kress, for allegedly suggesting she live in “the villa” with Fleming, all while there was another house of volleyball players she could have lived with.
“Todd Kress, knowing this person was a man, and saying that I’m going to ‘fit in better’ with these girls on my volleyball team, couldn’t have been further from the truth,” she said.
“We were all in the same class, so if all of us are there next year it’s not like we’d have to find another roommate, so he thought it would be nice that I was with all of the girls that are in my class so we could spend a full two years together.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Kress and Fleming for comment, but did not hear back at time of publication.
Fox News Digital also reached out to SJSU for comment.
In response, the university provided President Cynthia Teniente-Matson’s announcement that the SJSU and California University (CSU) system are suing the “federal government” in response to a U.S. Department of Education investigation that determined SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of Fleming, Slusser and the other players, adding, “We have no further comment.”
Teniente-Matson announced Saturday that the school was going on the legal offensive.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) offered a set of compliance points for SJSU to resolve the alleged Title IX violations involving the trans athlete. Teniente-Matson claimed the OCR’s findings “aren’t grounded in facts.”
“Because we believe OCR’s findings aren’t grounded in the facts or the law, SJSU and the CSU filed a lawsuit today against the federal government to challenge those findings and prevent the federal government from taking punitive action against the university, including the potential withholding of critical federal funding,” Teniente-Matson said Friday.
Teniente-Matson also affirmed the school’s allegiance to the LGBTQ community in the announcement.
“Our support for the LGBTQ members of our community, who have experienced threats and harms over the last several years, remains unwavering. We know the attention the university has received around this issue and the investigative process that followed have been unsettling for many in our community,” the president said.
“We’ve heard the fear and anxiety that it has created and recognize that waiting for the university’s response has been difficult at a time already filled with uncertainty.”
Slusser said she cried tears of joy when she initially learned the news that President Donald Trump’s administration determined her former school violated Title IX.
“I didn’t think it would hit me that way, but just seeing that finally something, even if it’s not really affecting me much and what I went through, but something was being done,” she said. “So that feeling brought tears to my eyes… everything I’m doing isn’t for nothing.”
Then, when she learned the news that instead of complying with OCR, the school was fighting back, she was so frustrated that she went on X and made her first original post since October.
“It makes me so mad that SJSU still refuses to see that everything they did is wrong. I think they’re just too scared to admit it and face the repercussions of their actions!” Slusser told Fox News Digital immediately after learning the news.
Now, a new legal precedent related to Trump’s authority to enforce Title IX for the rest of his presidency potentially hangs in the balance.
And the conflict behind it all dates back to a regretful college recruitment and housing decision.
As Slusser alleges, Kress lobbied for her, Fleming and the two other roommates to live in “the villa” for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, since they were all set to be returning players in 2024.
Beyond “the villa,” Kress allegedly also put Slusser and Fleming in the same hotel rooms during trips for away games, according to former SJSU assistant volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose.
“Blaire wanted to room with Brooke Slusser, and that’s who Blaire felt comfortable, so Blaire gets what Blaire wants,” Batie-Smoose previously told Fox News Digital.
Batie-Smoose is currently suing SJSU for wrongful termination.
In their first season together in 2023, SJSU went 13-18.
Slusser led the team in assists with a whopping 753, which was over 436 more than the team’s second-place leader in assists.
Fleming led the team in kills-per-spike with 3.57, which was 1.84 more than the second-place leader in that stat.
Slusser previously told Fox News Digital in December 2024 that at one point in that 2023 season, Fleming spiked a ball at her thigh, and she had to nurse dark bruises on her thigh for an entire week after that.
Slusser had just assumed Fleming was just a very strong and talented biological female at that time.
The team fell well short of qualifying for the Mountain West Tournament, but there was momentum going into the following season with a strong core of returning players, headlined by Slusser and Fleming.
And a lot of them were already living together in the same apartment, partying with the school’s other sports stars, living the California dream.
The apartment became a regular destination for not only the volleyball players, but all of San Jose State’s sports teams, Slusser said. She said their door was regularly left open for the school’s athletes to hang out and sometimes party.
“It was an open-door policy,” Slusser said.
The women living there would cook dinner together, Slusser said, and she even organized a group trip to a local HomeGoods to get decorations for the apartment’s blank white walls.
“We were really close, we would do everything together,” Slusser said.
Through it all, Fleming earned a special reputation with Slusser, when she thought Fleming was just another girl. But it ended up being a cruel irony after Slusser learned of Fleming’s birth sex.
“One of the things I loved most about Blaire as a friend was that I knew he would always tell me the truth, no matter what I asked. That’s something he was known for on the team, when you ask him something be ready for the truth,” Slusser said.
One day. when Slusser asked other teammates how she looked, they told her, “You look amazing.” But when she asked Fleming, Fleming responded by telling Slusser she needed to put on more bronzer, she said.
Then one day, Slusser learned that transparency was an illusion.
That day came in the 2024 spring semester.
“I got home and all the doors were shut, which, like I said, is very odd, because we were very much an open-door, always hanging out type apartment,” she said.
A news article had come out earlier in the day. Slusser had not seen it yet.
“Blaire and my other roommate had asked if I wanted to get Chick-Fil-A, because I had a car and they didn’t. So I ended up taking them there and it was kind of quiet, again, which is weird. And I remember we were parked and they were eating, and Blaire just looked at my roommate and said ‘I don’t know how to tell her.'”
Slusser said her other roommate told Fleming to show her “the article.”
The article, published by the independent women-owned media outlet “Reduxx” reported that Fleming was transgender.
“I read it, sat there in silence reading it in front of them,” Slusser said, before turning to Fleming and saying, “I hope you’re doing OK. I know you’re apparently getting bashed all over online and I don’t really want that for anyone. But I think you know my opinion on this situation.”
Nothing happened right away. They continued to live together, go to class and prepare for the 2024 volleyball season.
Once fall rolled around, Slusser made a decision that would change her and Fleming’s life.
“If I had a daughter one day, that was in my position and I never did anything about it and could have, then I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself,” she said. “Having kids is literally my biggest dream in life.”
Slusser joined Riley Gaines’ lawsuit against the NCAA at the onset of the 2024 season. Other volleyball teams began to forfeit. The team was an epicenter for regular national news coverage during an election-season media cycle. And police protection had to be assigned to the team on a regular basis.
At one point, throughout the chaos, Slusser posted a video on her Snapchat, with her and other roommates celebrating Fleming moving out of the apartment.
Then Slusser took legal action, just days before the 2024 election. This time, she was leading her own lawsuit with other players in the Mountain West against the conference and representatives of SJSU and CSU.
Slusser and her co-plaintiffs tried to end Fleming’s season prematurely, when they filed a request for preliminary injunction which would have ruled the trans athlete ineligible.
After weeks, then months of legal conflict and nonstop media coverage, all while navigating classes and the rigors of a Division I volleyball season, Slusser fell ill.
She developed an eating disorder and began to turn anorexic, she claims.
Fleming, as a former roommate, previously addressed those claims.
“She’s been anorexic and struggled with food since I’ve known her[,] aka since 2023. She literally would weigh herself 2-3x a day and keep track of it on her whiteboard in her room…. So I really don’t care or feel bad for her,” Fleming previously told Fox News Digital of Slusser’s eating disorder revelation.
Slusser disputed those claims.
“These statements are just not true. I have always lived a very healthy lifestyle. Before these events took place[,] I was very disciplined in fueling myself for athletics and [kept] track to make sure I was where I need to be[,] to be the best athlete. It wasn’t until all the craziness started that my healthy lifestyle turned very unhealthy into not eating the amount I should,” Slusser previously told Fox News Digital.
Through it all, she still showed up to practice every day and took her spot next to Fleming on the court. They continued to travel together for games. They traveled all the way to Las Vegas for the conference tournament, where they finished with the second-best record in the Mountain West, assisted by six games forfeited.
Then they advanced to the Mountain West final without even having to touch the court in Vegas. Boise State forfeited in the semifinal round, marking the Broncos’ third forfeit to the Spartans that season.
It all ended in a championship loss to Colorado State. Fleming and Slusser’s volleyball careers were over.
But their post-career controversy-ridden lives had only begun.
And for Slusser, born and raised as a Christian in Texas, just a year and a half living in Northern California had taken a frightening toll.
The stress, depression, anxiety and exhaustion caused her to temporarily suffer the fear of losing the very thing she was fighting for.
She faced fear for her very fertility, losing her menstrual cycle for nine months.
“I want to have the dream future for that I envision for myself of having kids in the future, I want as many as possible, and I think if that weren’t able to happen, that would break my heart,” she said, adding it “100%” caused her to feel panic and worry that it could impact her in a permanent way.
“That was probably one of the biggest factors of why I need to keep myself healthy.”
With her family’s help, and regular prayer, Slusser recovered from her eating disorder, and everything went back to normal, physically, her father Paul previously told Fox News Digital.
But even the fear from that experience isn’t keeping Slusser out of the fight now. She continues to take an active role in the legal conflict related to the SJSU scandal, and even beyond that.
In January, Slusser spoke outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for the two cases related to state laws prohibiting trans athletes in women’s sports.
And just last week, she found out the outcome of those cases could play a consequential role in her own lawsuit.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews dismissed all the plaintiffs’ charges against the Mountain West Conference, but did not dismiss charges of Title IX violations against the California State University (CSU) system.
Crews deferred his ruling on whether to dismiss those charges to after the decision in the ongoing B.P.J. v West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
The CSU provided a statement to Fox News Digital in response to Crews’ ruling.
“CSU is pleased with the court’s ruling. SJSU has complied with Title IX and all applicable law, and it will continue to do so,” the statement read.
But Slusser’s lawyer, Bill Bock, is optimistic his side will prevail in those charges.
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the Congress and the members of Congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
SJSU is fighting a legal war on multiple fronts, suing the federal government and awaiting a landmark Supreme Court ruling regarding Slusser’s lawsuit, all while Batie-Smoose is waging her wrongful termination suit.
The outcomes of those cases could impact the future of women’s sports in America, forever.
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