Former SJSU volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose filed a fresh lawsuit alleging the school retaliated against her Trump support and religious beliefs during a transgender athlete scandal.
Batie-Smoose, once the associate head coach of San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team, filed the new complaint on Oct. 13 in the Northern District of California. She names California State University trustees and 11 university employees, including head coach Todd Kress, and seeks reinstatement, back pay, damages, and the correction of adverse personnel records.
Fox News Digital reported that the filing revives claims first raised in an earlier employment suit dismissed in September with permission to amend. At the center of the dispute is the school’s handling of transgender athlete Blaire Fleming’s place on the women’s roster, Batie-Smoose’s stated religious objections, and what she describes as open hostility toward her support for Donald Trump.
University officials have declined substantive comment while they review the claims. The case sits inside a larger fight over Title IX, sex-separated sports, and whether coaches who object on religious or biological grounds get treated the same as those who do not.
According to the complaint, Kress berated Batie-Smoose during practice and used her politics as a weapon in front of athletes. The filing states he called her a “Trump-loving” coach and mocked her affiliation while she worked.
The complaint puts it this way:
"Kress would also berate her during practice in front of the athletes, calling her ‘Trump-loving’ or a ‘Trump lover’ and mocking her political affiliation,"
Batie-Smoose also says she told Kress, in substance, that “God made man and woman,” and that her beliefs prevented her from treating a male athlete as female. She alleges she learned Fleming was transgender only after arriving at SJSU in 2023, after relocating her family from Connecticut to California for the job.
Readers who follow national fights over political retaliation will recognize the pattern of institutions policing viewpoint while claiming neutrality, a theme that has also surfaced in coverage of Trump’s year-one federal workforce overhaul.
The complaint further alleges Kress cornered, yelled at, and berated her after a canceled recruiting visit around August 2023, and told her he could get her fired. When she reported the conduct to athletics HR and an administrator identified as Alexander, she says she was told Kress was her boss and she needed to listen to him. Kress, she alleges, faced no discipline.
On Oct. 29, 2024, Batie-Smoose submitted a Title IX complaint. Days later, on Nov. 2, an administrator blocked her from Spartan Gym about 90 minutes before a home match, took her ID and keys, and ordered her to leave. She says she could not retrieve her belongings.
The suspension letter referenced a complaint against her dated Oct. 24, five days before her own Title IX filing. Allegations listed against her included differential treatment based on protected status, disclosure of confidential student information, drinking with athletes during team travel, unprofessional conduct, inappropriate language, and refusal to coach athletes.
She denies improperly disclosing protected education records and says the information she discussed came from public sources or personal observation. She acknowledges having a drink in an airport lounge while adult players were present, but says she neither bought their drinks nor encouraged them to drink, and alleges another male coach drank there without the same fallout. She also denies directing inappropriate language at players or refusing to coach an athlete under her responsibility.
On Jan. 31, 2025, athletics director Jeff Konya notified her, on behalf of President Cynthia Teniente-Matson, that her temporary coaching appointment would not be renewed. In April she was named head volleyball coach at Cisco College.
Batie-Smoose’s earlier amended complaint did not survive. On Sept. 4, Judge Noël Wise dismissed it and gave her 21 days to amend. The order cut against her core retaliation theory on sex discrimination.
Wise wrote:
"Plaintiff’s complaint supports that she was disciplined for violating a confidentiality law, not for opposing discrimination on the basis of sex,"
The judge found the allegations did not plausibly tie the suspension or nonrenewal to her sex or protected advocacy, and stressed the university’s account that it acted after she disclosed student information to the media despite instructions to keep it confidential. The new October filing is her attempt to reframe and replead those claims with added detail on political and religious hostility and unequal discipline.
Viewpoint enforcement and quiet scrubbing of inconvenient associations remain a live political habit, including cases like the one in which a Montana Democrat scrubbed progressive figures from a campaign site.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a findings letter dated Jan. 28, 2026. As described in the new complaint, OCR concluded SJSU violated Title IX in athletic participation, sex-separated facilities, and the handling of discrimination complaints. On employment and scholarships, the office flagged compliance concerns and evidence it viewed as pointing to unequal treatment, while noting gaps in the records.
OCR noted that personnel investigations involving both Batie-Smoose and Kress opened on Nov. 12, 2024, and questioned why the university suspended her but not him. Investigator notes cited in the material stated that Kress “crossed the FERPA line in his interview with ESPN.” Internal records, as described, suggested officials worried that suspending Kress could “spark more media attention” and “unduly disrupt the team.”
That is the opposite of even-handed enforcement. One coach lands on leave and loses the job. The other keeps coaching and traveling.
CSU’s answer was to sue the Education Department on March 6. The university argues the coaches were not similarly situated, that Batie-Smoose disclosed protected information, and that an investigation found insufficient evidence Kress retaliated against female teammate Brooke Slusser. CSU also says an investigation found Batie-Smoose discriminated against Fleming because of sex and gender identity, a finding she contests. The system maintains it followed then-governing law, federal guidance, and NCAA rules during the 2022, 24 seasons and declined a proposed resolution agreement.
A March 31 court order established protections against funding disruption tied to the challenged findings. In a related track, a Colorado federal judge in March dismissed Mountain West conference defendants from a suit brought by Slusser, Batie-Smoose, and other volleyball players, finding the conference not subject to Title IX and not a state actor for constitutional claims, while deferring some damages issues against CSU trustees.
On Feb. 6, 2025, the day after a Trump executive order, the NCAA changed policy to restrict competition on women’s teams to athletes assigned female at birth, while still allowing athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams under set conditions. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court upheld challenged restrictions in West Virginia and Idaho, ruling that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause permit schools to reserve female teams based on biological sex, while leaving open whether schools may still allow transgender women and girls on female teams.
Those later shifts do not erase the 2022, 24 roster decisions that drove the SJSU conflict. They do underline how far official sports policy moved once the political pressure changed, movement consistent with other high-profile Trump-era executive fights over institutional rules.
SJSU’s public line on the new case is short. A spokesperson said:
"Due to pending litigation, San Jose State is unable to comment,"
A CSU spokesperson added:
"The CSU is not commenting at this time. We were made aware of the lawsuit yesterday and are still reviewing the claims."
Kress’s prior stops include Florida State in 2006 and Fairfield University from 2019 through 2022, the same stretch when Batie-Smoose worked with him before the California move. Fox News Digital also reported in July on a 1998 hotel-room assault accusation against Kress by a former Fairfield player; the new complaint alleges a former player notified SJSU in October 2024 and that an official acknowledged a safety concern, while alleging the university took no meaningful action and Kress kept coaching without interruption.
Media handling of Trump-world controversies has itself become part of the credibility fight, including episodes such as when ABC News restored a diluted Trump sons report after an unexplained scrub.
Batie-Smoose wants a jury trial, punitive damages against individually liable defendants, legal fees, and the removal or correction of the suspension letter, a later evaluation, and an October 2025 nondiscrimination-policy finding. No total damages figure appears in the complaint as described.
The university’s silence and the earlier judicial skepticism over her first theory do not settle the new pleading. What the filing does lay out is a concrete sequence: open political mockery, religious objections to a male athlete in a women’s sport, a Title IX complaint from her, rapid leave and nonrenewal for her, continued status for the head coach, and a federal civil rights office that later asked why the punishments did not match.
When a public university can sideline a coach for her faith and her vote while protecting the program’s preferred roster experiment, women’s sports and equal rules are no longer the priority, politics is.