A dozen plaintiffs, including two Boise State University volleyball players, are taking the ongoing transgender athletics dispute to federal court.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against San José State University, whose women’s volleyball roster includes a transgender athlete, according to previous court filings. The lawsuit also targets the Mountain West Conference, saying the athletic conference hastily and quietly adopted a transgender athletics policy the same day Boise State announced it would not play a game against San José State.

Boise State was the first of four Mountain West schools to lose games against San José State. Boise State He announced his first defeat on September 27the day before a scheduled road game.

According to the lawsuit, Mountain West added: transgender inclusion policy The policy says, in part, that any team that refuses to play against an opponent with a transgender athlete “will be deemed to have forfeited the competition.”

The policy and timing of the conference was an attempt to “punish members of the Boise State University women’s volleyball team for speaking out,” according to the lawsuit asking a federal judge to strike down the policy.

However, the timing of the policy may be open to debate. The Idaho Statesman reported Thursday. The conference says it has had a transgender inclusion policy in place since August 2022, according to emails sent to the Statesman and Idaho EdNews.

132-page lawsuit It also sheds light on Boise State’s loss on Sept. 27.

“Behind the scenes, Boise State University women’s volleyball players and administrators were pressuring the Boise State University Team not to play Team SJSU due to concerns about competitive fairness and athlete safety,” the lawsuit states.

Like Idaho EdNews reported in OctoberBoise State athletics officials had discussed a possible loss for several days before reaching the decision. Boise State called the loss a decision of “university leadership” and did not say anything about whether the players had a say in the matter.

Eleven players and one coach Is there a plaintiff in the case? — including Boise State players Kiersten Van Kirk and Katelyn Van Kirk, two sisters from Bozeman, Mont. Plaintiffs include San José State assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, current San José State player Brooke Slusser and former San José State player Elle Patterson. The plaintiffs also come from three other Mountain West schools that lost games this season: Utah State University, the University of Nevada and the University of Wyoming.

Boise State deferred comment on the case to the Mountain West Conference. The conference did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit is supported and at least to some extent funded by the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, a Nevada-based group that opposes allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. The group says transgender athletes have an unfair physical advantage over female athletes; It’s an argument discussed at length in Wednesday’s trial.

“It is unacceptable for the MWC and SJSU to ignore the fairness and safety of female athletes,” ICONS co-founder Marshi Smith said in a statement Wednesday.

As EdNews previously reported, ICONS was one of several national groups that lobbied for Boise State to forfeit its game on Sept. 27. ICONS contacted the university’s President Marlene Tromp directly on September 24. Boise State said outside lobbying did not factor into its decision to forfeit the penalty.

The Mountain West schools have lost a total of six games to San José State, including the Boise State home game scheduled for Nov. 21.

Numerous penalties mandated by the Mountain West’s transgender inclusion policy padded San José State’s record and penalized Boise State and other teams, the lawsuit says. This will change the Mountain West’s seeding heading into the conference’s postseason tournament later this month; Six of the conference’s 11 teams qualified for the tournament.

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs are asking the court to void all winnings or remit penalties for San José County. They also seek “a declaration that any male student-athlete is ineligible to compete in women’s volleyball at the MWC and the San José State University women’s volleyball team.”