{"id":495981,"date":"2026-10-14T16:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T16:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/495981\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T16:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T16:40:13","slug":"san-jose-state-coach-claims-trans-athlete-dispute-led-to-firing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/495981\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose State Coach Claims Trans Athlete Dispute Led to Firing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former associate head women\u2019s volleyball coach at San Jose State University alleges she was suspended and fired in retaliation for raising concerns about the participation of a transgender female athlete on the team.<\/p>\n

Melissa Batie-Smoose claims her suspension and firing were at least in part based on the content and viewpoint of her speech and the exercise of her religious beliefs, according to a complaint<\/a> filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.<\/p>\n

The SJSU volleyball team was a flash point in the broader debate surrounding transgender athlete policies at the collegiate level in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former associate head women\u2019s volleyball coach at San Jose State University alleges she was suspended and fired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[192751,88,90,89,63930,12878],"class_list":["post-495981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-retaliatory-discharge","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-student-privacy","tag-variable-interest-entities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}