Former Transgender Player Case Complicates WNBA’s Effort to Exclude Men
“If the league truly believes that gender is malleable, the WNBA has already allowed a man to play in the league.” And that precedent has landed the WNBA in “a huge legal mess.”
Over the past week, multiple media outlets, including the Associated Press, ESPN, and USA Today, have reported that, according to anonymous league sources, the WNBA considers former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White to be ineligible for the league’s April draft.
In a sane world, the WNBA would be right to exclude them. Biological males should not be allowed to play on any women’s sports team.
But the WNBA has a problem: It has refused to spell out who qualifies as a woman under its eligibility rules. If league officials would simply define the term and state unequivocally whether transgender players are eligible to participate in the draft, the controversy could be resolved one way or the other.
In a Thursday op-ed, OutKick founder and Fox News contributor Clay Travis pointed to a very credible reason for the league’s reluctance: The WNBA previously allowed a biological woman who identifies as a man — a transgender man — to play in the league for 11 years.
Travis noted that transgender player Layshia Clarendon “remained eligible despite having top surgery — the removal of her breasts — and other so-called gender reassignment treatments in 2021. She retired from the WNBA in 2024.”
In a January 2021 Instagram post, Clarendon wrote:
It’s hard to put into words the feeling of seeing my chest for the first time free of breasts, seeing my chest the way I’ve always seen it, and feeling a sense of gender euphoria as opposed to gender dysphoria. Sighhh…freedom…freedom at last.
At the time, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and New York Liberty owner Joseph Tsai each issued public statements celebrating Clarendon’s transition.
Travis pointed out the league referred to Clarendon “as him in all league press releases, guidebooks, and game notes.”
It’s unclear whether her gender-transition treatment included testosterone therapy, though her development of facial hair suggests that it may have.
According to Travis: [Emphasis added.]
She says that her WNBA teammates helped her draw a mustache on her face so she would look more like a man. “One of my teammates, before I had my little mustache, she helped me fill it in one day for media day with her eyebrow pen. She was like, ‘Oh, try this!’ So that was such a sweet, tender moment of a teammate just seeing you and affirming you in the same way someone will be filling in their eyebrows or mascara on their eyelashes.”
Clarendon says she eventually grew a mustache raising an intriguing question: Was she receiving testosterone treatments when this occurred? That seems likely. So in addition to allowing a woman who identified as a man to play basketball in the league, it appears likely the league permitted gender treatments, including testosterone, for a player. Elevated levels of testosterone are prohibited in most leagues, male and female, because they are considered performance enhancing.
Regardless of whether testosterone was part of Clarendon’s treatment, her case demonstrates that the WNBA previously allowed an openly transgender/nonbinary player who identified as a man to continue competing without publicly articulating a clear gender-eligibility standard.
If Freedom and White say they identify as women, the league will need to offer something more concrete than anonymous leaks declaring them ineligible. Clarendon’s precedent has put the WNBA in a bind: They may finally be forced to define who qualifies as a woman and state clearly whether — and under what circumstances — transgender players are eligible to compete.
Travis argued that “if the league truly believes that gender is malleable, the WNBA has already allowed a man to play in the league.”
And that precedent, he said, has landed the WNBA in “a huge legal mess.”
Elaborating on that point, he added:
In order to exclude Freedom and White, the league would have to argue Layshia Clarendon wasn’t actually a man, which directly contradicts the public statements the league has already made celebrating her transition to a man.
Given the WNBA’s handling of Clarendon’s transition, Travis, who is a lawyer, explained that the league has “four real options“:
1. Admit that Clarendon was never a man and was eligible to play in the league because she was born a woman, meaning the league must deny her transition to a man is legitimate and affirm that you are the gender on your birth certificate for purposes of league rules.
2. Admit women who identify as men and men who identify as women into the league, allowing gender identity to govern, not birth gender. This would allow Freedom and White and any other men who identify as women to play in the league.
3. Deny Freedom and White are actually women, meaning the WNBA knows what a woman is. But, again, the challenge here is they have allowed an avowed man to already play in the league and celebrated it.
4. Permit Freedom and White to be entered into the WNBA Draft, but have teams refuse to draft them. The problem here is Freedom and White could then immediately sue, alleging antitrust violations based on the conspired agreement of teams to not draft them, when the players would clearly be the best basketball players available to be drafted.
For years, the WNBA could celebrate Clarendon’s transition without ever having to confront the logical implications of its position. Freedom and White have now forced the issue. Anonymous leaks won’t resolve the contradiction. If the league wants to keep them out, it may finally have to do what it has so far avoided: define what a woman is, explain precisely who is eligible to play in a women’s basketball league, and then live with the consequences of that definition.
***
In the video below, Travis discusses his offer of $10 million to the Las Vegas Aces, the 2025 WNBA champions, if they can defeat a team of 14-year-old boys of his choosing.
His original challenge — to play a team of high school boys — was rejected.
As Sean Hannity emphasizes, this is an offer, not a bet.
.@ClayTravis talks WNBA and Enes Kanter Freedom with @seanhannity. pic.twitter.com/EwYa8IxKQI
— The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show (@clayandbuck) August 26, 2026
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Comments
Trans man = pretend man.
Trans woman = pretend woman.
There’s not enough popcorn …
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Eat imported popcorn from China
Chinese popcorn = pretend popcorn
Pretend popcorn goes well with pretend sports
And in the wnba they all play pretend basketball.
When this first started becoming a thing I found it incredibly confusing and could never remember whether it was “trans men” or “trans women” who were really men.
My solution, much like yours, was to replace the term “trans” with the correct word “fake” and all became clear.
Complicates? I’d say the WNBA policy as applied historically to prospective players clarifies rather than complicates their legal problem. IOW they can’t now decide that someone else can’t benefit from their open ended definition of sex/gender based eligibility without a very clear revision to the standard. The other issue they have is their anti trust exemption which may yet rise up to bite them.
They should allow these guys to play, the ratings for the WNBA would skyrocket past the NBA.
I would watch a few games myself with these two manly woman playing.
To Wong Foo with Swayze and Snipes is probably something you can find on the interwebs if you are interested in that.
That’s going to get them straight up sued.
The leadership of the WNBA can allow whoever they want to play because they administer a private sector association that prefers fantasy to reality. If fans feel likewise then they can do as they please with their membership decisions. They do not have to be logical, consistent or constrained by the opinions of the general public. So if they are sued or threatened with legal consequences they can ultimately ignore them as long as their fans keep buying tickets and purchasing the products of their corporate supporters.
Not really b/c they ain’t a clear cut ‘private association’. The risk of losing the WNBA antitrust exemption and that of their Parent the NBA which holds a 60% ish ownership stake in WNBA will eventually force a resolution. Now if you’re arguing the WNBA/NBA could simply surrender their current antitrust exemption and operate …sure they could …but then other rival leagues could form and compete for players, fan base and revenue.
I’m sorry, complete for what now?
A rival league(s) to both the WNBA and the NBA are real possibilities if the leagues choose to risk their current antitrust exemptions by proceeding with a very sketchy legal defense of ‘…we’re a private association and we can do what we want, nobody is the boss of us’ …which is effectively what Dean Robinson proposed.
Those new rival leagues would then be able to compete for viewers, player services, fans and sponsors, merchandise sales, ad revenue, broadcast rights. Then there’s the very deep pockets of the NBA to go after given the NBA is the majority owner of the WNBA and presumably could if it wished intervene but hasn’t.
Do you not know how employment discrimination laws work?
I know that in this case we are not witnessing discriminatory exclusion, just the opposite. They are practicing discriminatory inclusion. They are allowing self identifying “trans” men to join, but not permitting so called “cis” gender men to join. The question now should be whether they can exclude normal men under these circumstances. Perhaps a few can apply and see what happens, but I’m not sure at all if anti-discrimination laws address this situation. Perhaps someone here can enlighten us. Meanwhile, these idiots have managed to get themselves way more attention than they deserve, and as far as I’m concerned the WNBA can go it’s merry way pandering as they see fit, until enough people get sick of them to Bud Lite the whole sorry mess!
Nope, I’m on the other side of this. I’m in favor of subjecting the hopelessly woke to the full ,painful consequences of their insane delusions in every circumstance possible. Also, it has the beneficial side effect of forcing our judicial overlords to come out from behind the shield of law and acknowledge the hegemony of science and rationality for a change.
Logic and consequences mean nothing to zealots. They can’t be shamed and they can’t be reasoned with. They will keep right on doing whatever insanity they wish regardless of the damage, so doing battle with them is futile unless we are willing to descend to their level and wipe them out, which suits them just fine, since their goal is societal conflict, chaos, and collapse. Better to just ignore them and let them eventually self destruct, along with the fools who support them.
Even given that the league can set its own standards for admission, the point is that the record helps to establish what those standards are (esp. in the apparent absence of a written standard). Men who identify as “trans-women” likely have an actionable claim if they are kept out of the league because the league itself is on record of having permitted play by a “man.” (Or, at least, a transgender player. This may mean that the league cannot now prevent the admission of any transgender person.)
Probably more than a few nutcases in the WNBA that actually support the trans insanity, but i think largely many saw this as valuable publicity for a sport and league no one actually cared about watching. They’re miserable people that just wanted the attention and never gave much thought to legalities, let alone any broader moral implications of propagandizing in favor of the trans derangement.
Yep this is getting the pro wrestling popcorn focus right now.
Precisely like those people who proudly put themselves out in the public eye flying their full fetish flags, then when it only later occurs to them how they essentially destroyed their own credibility, sue anyone who republishes those public images.
If the league truly believes that gender is malleable, the WNBA has already allowed a man to play in the league:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”
Malleable? Humans are not malleable. Even at the very beginning, the zygote already has either XX or XY chromosomes
I was confused at no mention of the other elephant in the room, until I went back to check my sources and found that all the “news” about Brittney Griner being trans was a hoax.
As we old fighter pilots used to say, “Check your 6”! It applies to humans too. Look down at your 6 o’clock position nude and if it ain’t smooth, you’re a boy.
“Special on the outside.”
Off topic but what did you fly?
Why don’t feminists and lezbos just admit they can’t compete against men?
They don’t have to. The near-complete (if not “complete”) absence of “trans men” on men’s professional sports teams has already proven the point.
Lawyer Travis is wrong. Sorry.
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What happened in the past is not the problem. Rules can apply prospectively..
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Rules also can allow player(s) who have Y chromosomes but in all relevant ways are prenatally biological women, i.e. Y chromosome but with complete AIS or Swyer Syndromes. (Mothers of sons who may have some Y detritus, chimera cells, should be able to be readily clearable.)
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As far as the problem player(s) who have 5-ARD, these are men, actual men. New rules can “grandfather in” existing players under a medical privacy rationale — avoiding the fiduciary, contract and union issues — while prospectively barring new players with this condition.
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The flummoxing brouhaha persists because of (1) people who refuse to get themselves educated and speak ignorantly about XX/XY, and (2) lesbian players in romantic relationships or political affiliation with trannies, who also are largely ignorant, but who are making a lot of noise.
The carve outs you suggest are something they really don’t want to do because then they have biological exclusion criteria on future players that claim to be women.
The word “woman” refers to something biological — adult female human being. Most likely their lawyers are having issues because there already is ar least one, and possibly morem adult male human beings playing in the league, and sadly, like too many of the population, have allowed the propaganda deliberately confounding the words “sex” and “gender” to confuse them.
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(See Clay Travis’s misuse of the words in his “four options”, above. Your birth certificate indicates “sex”. People don’t have “genders”, and the phrase “birth gender” is a meaningless absurdity.)
There are no upsides here for the WNBA. It either has to allow men to play, or it has to refute the Left’s “trans” narrative and ban biological males as “different.” The Left will not tolerate either because the former (even if it only admits actual “trans women,” i.e. males who have actually transitioned, and not faux trans women) would show the lie that “trans women are women”* and the latter would reestablish common sense in this argument that may lead to the reassertion of common sense over other issues.
*To say nothing of how many of the women in the league may actually react in response to having to compete against trans women, which will expose them to a significantly raised risk of injury. The league could suddenly collapse for want of players willing to expose themselves to this increased risk.
IANAL but I suspect that what Clay Travis is looking at is various ‘gender identity’ employment discrimination laws that have been passed in various blue states, so his analysis has nothing to do with chromosomes.
Past behavior also informs how WNBA officials have interpreted the league’s governing documents.
Not a legal eagle but I think they have an out for this particular case by saying that you are automatically ineligible if you played in the NBA. Of course, that only kicks the can until they have another male player who didn’t try to enter the draft.
It also would be immeasurably helpful if people would stop using the word “gender” interchangeably with “sex”. There is no such thing as “transgender”. People don’t have “genders”.
Agreed. Words have gender, living creatures have sex. Eighth grade biology.
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Well, it was 9th grade, not 8th , and it was after school one afternoon, not in Biology class, but close enough, close enough.
Except you are assuming a fact not in evidence. The progs/Marxists have no desire to be “helpful” as us normies understand the word.
Don’t forget we have a USSC justice who refused to define what makes one a woman.
I wearied of the gender-bending nonsense, so I tried to answer my question “What race is Enes Kanter Freedom?” He is of Turkish and Kurdish stock, so I guess he is “White.”
He is a Muslim who is pro-Israel and anti-“Islamaphobia.” He reportedly plans to run for Congress in 2028.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enes_Kanter_Freedom#
https://enesfreedom.org/
I have to consider that all this drama is bringing more audience to the WNBA .
And, they like it.
Disband the league of mostly angry black thuggish lesbians and their lesbian coaches and owners. Virtually no one will miss it.
I think they’ll try to weasel out of it. Something like that it was okay for the one because she started out eligible whereas these two men have no history of being women therefore they aren’t sincere. Or some such thing. They will not, under any circumstances, admit to being wrong about anything.
It complicates nothing. The pertinent fact is that the player was a biological woman. This was not a male player claiming to be a woman. So I fail to see the problem. WNBA allowed a woman to play even if she identified as a male. This means she did not have the physical advantages that a man playing against women would have.
Unless she did take testosterone, like the legendary East German Women’s Swim Team.
“Strong like ox. Beautiful like tractor.” Girls also do real well in shot put.
Or strong like Annie Glyph, the (genetically modified) rickshaw girl.
(Now there’s an obscure literary reference for everyone.)
She became a “trans man.” So, does the law require all “trans” people to be treated the same, or does it admit of different treatment depending upon whether a person is a trans man or a trans woman? Any claim that the law does allow discrimination, especially discrimination based on biological sex, would be a loss for the Left. The Left is in a very difficult spot here. It can’t win outright, as all solutions to this problem refute some element or elements of its narrative concerning sex and gender identity.
For instance, any distinction between trans men and trans women made on the basis of biological sex would establish that biological sex does make a difference and that “transitioning” does not make a male of a female nor vice versa. For the Left, every solution to this conundrum has a barb associated with it. There is no way the trans narrative comes out of this intact, and the damage will be done by the WNBA, one of the trans community’s “allies.”
Options #5 is: get a #Resistance judge to do what the WNBA wants.
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