The head of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has ordered a task force of team executives to examine who is eligible to play in the league, after two former men’s professional players declared themselves candidates for the women’s draft.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press and ESPN, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told teams on August 7 that questions over transgender participation in women’s basketball would keep drawing attention. She said the league would “always approach this topic thoughtfully, respectfully”.
The memo said a task force of team presidents and general managers would take up the question at a previously scheduled meeting the following week. Engelbert also offered listening sessions for club officials and promised further talks with the players’ union.
She set out three principles in the memo. Eligibility rules in the WNBA are collectively bargained, unlike those of some other leagues and governing bodies, and competitive fairness would remain among the league’s priorities.
The dispute began with an ESPN profile published in July in which Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham backed barring transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sport. She said she wanted to protect “young girls in a locker room”.
Rival demonstrations then followed the Fever on the road. Groups for and against Cunningham gathered outside Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on July 28 and outside the Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, three days later.
Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was fined and suspended from five home games after swearing at two 16-year-old spectators who held up signs supporting Cunningham. The club apologised and said it respected the sanction.
Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt against the Fever on August 2, having said a day earlier that it was “problematic” to treat transgender athletes as the main difficulty facing women’s sport. She and Cunningham spoke at mid-court before the game and both later described the exchange as respectful.
US Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that Cunningham should keep speaking her mind.
The row sharpened on August 7 when Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, both former National Basketball Association (NBA) first-round picks, said they would enter the 2027 WNBA draft as women. Freedom, taken third overall in 2011, posted a video in which he said he was “officially declaring myself a WNBA prospect”.
White, drafted in the first round in 2012, told Fox News: “I’m transgender. I’m a woman.” He is a Republican candidate in Minnesota’s Senate primary on August 11.
Neither declaration by itself places a player in the draft pool, and the league has not said what test it would apply to such an application.
The collectively bargained rulebook states that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA”. It does not define gender identity or sex recorded at birth, and it sets out no self-identification standard of the sort Freedom cited. No transgender player has competed in the league.
The players’ union said it embraced diversity and inclusion while condemning abuse directed at transgender people. It added that its members would not be used as “political pawns”.
Tensions surfaced on court on August 8, when Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington was ejected for a flagrant foul on Cunningham and then posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on social media, tagging the Fever. Indiana won 90-86. Cunningham said the call had nothing to do with race and pointed to her own ejection for a similar foul in 2025.
The argument has already reached Europe. Julie Tétart, a transgender player for Monaco Basket Association who led Ligue Féminine 2, the second division of French women’s basketball, in scoring and rebounding in 2025-26, told the US website OutKick she would not refuse a WNBA contract.
Asked whether she would move, Tétart replied: “The league, yes. The country, no.” She has told L’Équipe that she faced abuse from spectators at some matches in France.
Forbes reported that the exchange left the WNBA exposed either way: passing over Tétart would test its stated commitment to inclusion, while pursuing her would supply its critics with evidence.
European governing bodies have already moved on the question. The Darts Regulation Authority changed its rules in April to keep transgender players out of women’s tournaments, citing physical advantages held by biological males and treating darts as a “gender-affected sport” under the Equality Act 2010 in the United Kingdom.
In the United States the legal ground has shifted. The Supreme Court ruled by six votes to three on June 30 that state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s school sport breached neither Title IX nor the constitution. More than half of US states have such laws, though none binds a private professional league.
The task force meets this week. Engelbert has not said whether it will propose changes to a rulebook that cannot be rewritten without the union’s agreement.
