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.
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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.
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