Brooke Slusser Slams 'Apparent Bias' In Mountain West Investigation Of Trans Player Blaire Fleming
Slusser was the target of an alleged plot by transgender SJSU volleyball teammate
During last year's NCAA volleyball season, a disturbing allegation came to light surrounding the San Jose State volleyball team. Transgender player Blaire Fleming allegedly colluded with a player from Colorado State, Malaya Jones, to injure SJSU teammate Brooke Slusser.
The accusation stemmed from an alleged conversation between Fleming and Jones the night before an October 3 match between Colorado State and San Jose State. The week before the match, Slusser joined a lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing biological males to compete in women's sports and spoke publicly about the unfairness of Fleming, a male, competing in women's volleyball.
The Mountain West investigated the allegation, but said they didn't find any evidence of collusion between Fleming and Jones. However, there was a major problem with the investigation, which was purportedly conducted by an independent party.
Former San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser, who was the target of an alleged plot to injure her, says the Mountain West investigation into trans player Blaire Fleming was biased.
(Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
As Fox News Digital reported, the law firm that was hired to conduct the investigation had an apparent conflict of interest. Attorney Tim Heaphy of the law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher led the investigation.
"Heaphy carried this [investigation] out in the same month that other partners in his firm worked to protect Fleming's eligibility to compete in women's college volleyball," Fox News Digital reported.
Essentially, the same law firm that was hired by the Mountain West Conference to conduct an "independent investigation" into Blaire Fleming was also tasked with defending the conference in a separate lawsuit – where Brooke Slusser was one of the plaintiffs – to continue to allow Fleming to compete in women's volleyball.
"I think this is something that needed to be shown to the public," Slusser said in a statement to OutKick. "The truth was laid out for everyone to see that there was apparent bias when it came to how this investigation was pursued."
OutKick reached out to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, San Jose State and the Mountain West Conference in reference to allegations that the investigation into Fleming represented a conflict-of-interest. None of them responded to our requests.
It's hard to see a scenario where the law firm or the Mountain West conducted a good-faith investigation into the allegations against Blaire Fleming. Both entities appear to have had a vested interest in clearing Fleming's name and that means it would have been incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to carry out an unbiased investigation.
That's a huge problem for both organizations. If a law firm can't be trusted to act as an unbiased investigator, it calls the entire practice into question. If a conference can't be trusted to properly investigate an accusation that involved intent to purposefully injure one of its players, it calls all of their safety protocols into question.
Both have a lot of explaining to do.