Shot fired at women's volleyball coach who exposed male on team as she preps suit over termination

Readers of The Sacramento Bee's coverage of a rally for legislation pitched as protecting girls, women and parental rights at the California statehouse Friday would have no idea someone shot at the house of the volleyball coach who helped inspire the bills and spoke at the rally, or even that San Jose State University fired her for exposing a male on her women's team.

The Capitol newspaper's omission of the shot fired through Melissa Batie-Smoose's window Monday while she was at home in a virtual meeting with a lawyer, confirmed by local police Thursday, and her unwilling departure from SJSU appears par for the course in mainstream media coverage of the backlash to men competing as women in school sports.

Batie-Smoose is "committed to … pursuing her own legal actions regarding her discriminatory and retaliatory termination" against the taxpayer-funded university, her new counsel, Vernadette Broyles, of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, who also represented pediatric gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed, said in a statement before Friday's rally.

The statement specifies that SJSU "refused to renew her contract on January 31, 2025, not for her coaching performance, but for standing up against what she saw as violations of Title IX." Broyles said at Friday's rally the non-renewal was "inexplicable."

The termination violates federal Title VII as employment discrimination based on sex and "California's related laws," Broyles said.

"We are in the due diligence phase and there are many factors to consider to determine any and all appropriate avenues of action" but "the wheels are spinning rapidly in this process," she told Just the News when asked for the timeline on legal action related to her termination.

The most successful coach in the history of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Batie-Smoose is already part of a Title IX and First Amendment lawsuit with SJSU players against the Mountain West Conference and SJSU officials for the transgender participation policy under which Blaire Fleming – formerly Brayden – competes on the SJSU women's team, the assumed rationale for several forfeits by other teams last fall.

While neither SJSU nor Fleming has ever confirmed the athlete's gender identity or sex, Reduxx reported last spring that Fleming's grandmother referred to Fleming as her "grandson" in an early Facebook photo and that other family photos show Fleming was "raised as a boy" but started wearing feminine clothes around 14 years old. 

Fleming transferred out of Coastal Carolina, where the athlete played women's volleyball, after South Carolina's "Save Women's Sports" legislation became law in 2022, which presumably would have relegated Fleming to men's teams.

The federal judicial docket shows the defendants filed a motion Friday to stay "all deadlines related to discovery and disclosures pending resolution" of their motions for dismissal. Judge Kato Crews denied the plaintiffs' emergency motion for preliminary injunction Nov. 25, 2024, finding they were unlikely to win, but referred the new motion to a different judge Saturday.

Some litigation is moving forward, including by Connecticut female athletes against the state athletic conference. One of the more unusual legal fights is happening in Minnesota, where USA Powerlifting is fighting to preserve its ban on male competitors in women's lifting, a sport largely determined by brute strength in which male puberty provides an insurmountable edge.

Broyles' Friday statement mentions they are committed to the "existing litigation against the NCAA and Mountain West Conference" despite setbacks.

Batie-Smoose was virtually meeting with Mountain West players and lead attorney Bill Bock when "I hear this big sound … I look over to the window and I see the bullet hole," she told Fox News. "Police said the shot had to come from the street behind me."

The fact that police are investigating the threat as vandalism – the weapon was a pellet gun – is "kind of crazy to me" because it could have harmed her if it hit her, she said.

Before her Title IX lawsuit last fall, Batie-Smoose filed a lengthy sworn declaration with the university, conference and NCAA, seeking investigation of the "overt favouritism" SJSU has shown Fleming relative to female players and suppression of their concerns about Fleming, as reported by Quillette, which obtained but did not post the declaration.

She told the Just the News podcast Furthermore with Amanda Head on Feb. 5 that SJSU fired her as assistant head coach Jan. 31 after Batie-Smoose had endured three months' suspension without any explanation.

The next day the Department of Education announced it was investigating SJSU, the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for "apparent Title IX violations" in light of President Trump's executive order to rescind federal funding from institutions that let males compete in girls' sports.

The department referred to "male athlete Blaire Fleming’s dominant performance" and physical threats on the court and "forced" forfeits by opponents "to protect their female athletes," as well as the lawsuit against SJSU, which alleged team captain Brooke Slusser learned Fleming was colluding with an opposing player to "blast" Slusser in the face, SJSU passed over female athletes to give Fleming a scholarship and that it retaliated against Batie-Smoose.

The NCAA's policy response to Trump's executive order is "riddled with loopholes," women's sports activist and former Olympian Jennifer Sey wrote Friday, especially by relying on sex recorded on "birth records." 

Only six states prohibit people from changing the sex on their birth certificates, Sey wrote. She noted Washington Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson last week accelerated "gender designation" changes to birth certificates to a three-day turnaround, down from 10 months.

"Our initial analysis is that Ms. Batie-Smoose does have causes of action that do not require waiting on the regulatory process" and Broyles is pursuing "all possible actions on her behalf," the lawyer told Just the News on Monday.

Batie-Smoose joined the program two years ago without knowing Fleming was male, claiming none of the players did either, and her first response to watching Fleming practice in person was "hits and blocks like a dude," which struck her as "strange," she told Head. 

The head coach told Batie-Smoose "in passing" about a week later that Fleming is male, and the administration then threatened to fire her if she divulged Fleming's sex, she said. 

Broyles said at Friday's rally that SJSU punished her client after she filed the complaint about players' concerns with being "forced to undress in front of a male," which is "sexual assault."

Lawmakers at the rally, all Republicans, described their legislation. Assembly member Leticia Castillo offered two bills that "reaffirm parents' rightful and constitutional role in deciding what is best for their children," AB 600 and AB 579, while Assembly member Bill Essayli spoke of his bill to govern access to school intimate facilities and sports by sex, not gender identity.

The Bee called the legislation "anti-trans" and barely mentioned Batie-Smoose, even though it separately released a clip of her remarks, saying she "left the program after speaking out" but not that her departure was involuntary.

Last month California Assembly member Kate Sanchez, R-Sacramento, introduced legislation to force the California Interscholastic Federation to amend its rules so that "a pupil whose sex was assigned male at birth" cannot compete "on a girls’ interscholastic sports team," which would also amend California law banning gender-identity discrimination in public schools.