There are a lot of ways to measure the popularity of the WNBA right now: the transformative new collective bargaining agreement, which increased the salary cap from $1.5 million to $7 million overnight; record ratings across the board; sold-out arenas; a $3 billion television deal; $250 million expansion fees.
Another metric? The sheer number of grifters who have flocked to the sport, using its prominence in the culture to get their own names and agendas in the headlines.
This has been a rising trend over the past few seasons, but it reached a fever pitch -- pun intended -- after Sophie Cunningham told ESPN that she wants to "protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men." Since those comments were published last month, political groups pushing bills to ban transgender girls and women from all levels of sport have made Cunningham the face of the movement, holding rallies outside of Indiana Fever games across the country. On Friday, two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, publicly declared themselves eligible for the 2027 WNBA Draft.
Through it all, the WNBA has remained frustratingly and inexcusably silent. But on Wednesday, the league convened a task force to discuss the topic and released the following statement, via a WNBA spokesperson:
Today's meeting covered a wide range of topics, including ongoing discussions on transgender athletes and the continued hate and vitriol directed at players online. We will continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months. We will approach these important conversations thoughtfully and in alignment with the values of our league. There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.
This short statement certainly didn't provide the clarity that so many are hungry for. But by dismissing the grifters like Kanter and White and refusing to make a reactionary policy or statement that caves to the fear-mongering and reinforces false narratives that transgender people are predators, the WNBA took an important first step towards regaining its own agency in the public discourse.
Now, it is time for the league to do what it has done best since its inception 30 years ago, and lead the way forward.
The WNBA does not currently have a public policy about transgender participation in the league. Eligibility guidelines are collectively bargained, but the CBA ratified in the spring merely states that "only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA." The league has not clarified the rules for transgender, nonbinary or intersex players. On one hand, this is understandable, as there has never been a known transgender woman in the league, nor has a transgender woman ever gotten close to making it onto a team in the league's history. While there have been two nonbinary WNBA players, AD Durr and Layshia Clarendon, both players' birth sex was female. The league and union had many issues to prioritize in this latest CBA as the two parties negotiated a paradigm-shifting labor agreement that redefined what it meant to be a professional in women's sports. A hypothetical eligibility issue wasn't at the top of the list.
On the other hand, all stakeholders in the WNBA should have seen this moment coming and been better prepared for it when it arrived. Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve -- a staunch ally of the transgender community who wore a T-shirt that said "Trans Kids Belong" when the Lynx hosted Cunningham and the Fever earlier this month -- said that she's been asking WNBA leadership for years, "What's our stance? What are we going to do when this occurs? Are we going to be ready?"
Over most of the past decade, conservatives have used the issue of transgender girls and women participating in sports as a way to garner headlines and amass political power. The conversation has distracted from the real issues facing women and girls in sports -- underfunding, a lack of sports medicine research, abusive coaches and administrators, a systemic lack of investment, promotion and infrastructure -- and instead demonized a very small part of the population. It has also been devastatingly effective, using extreme cases, dehumanizing characterizations, an oversimplification of biology and catchy slogans to get blanket bans against transgender athletes enacted at the local, state, national and international levels.
In 2000, Idaho became the first state in the United States to ban transgender girls and women from participating in women's sports. Today, more than half of the states have bans in place.
The NCAA, which adopted guidelines in 2011 requiring transgender women to undergo testosterone suppression treatment for one calendar year and continue documenting the medical treatment each successive year to remain eligible to compete in women's sports, adopted a blanket ban in 2025, less than one year after president Charlie Baker testified in front of Congress that out of more than 510,000 NCAA athletes, he only knew of 10 who were transgender. The IOC used to have a policy that allowed transgender women to compete in the female category if total testosterone levels were kept below 10 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) for at least 12 months prior to their first competition, before moving to a decentralized, sport-by-sport policy, then eventually the blanket ban.
One of the primary groups behind these bans is the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close ties to President Donald Trump. In June, the Heritage Foundation celebrated its victory when the Supreme Court ruled that it is not a violation of Title IX for states to exclude transgender people from school sports. Lest you believe that this was ever about actually protecting women and girls in sports, just over a week later, the organization published a paper by senior research fellow and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor arguing for the dismantling of Title IX's sports requirements altogether.
In "Title IX's Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity," Yenor decries that early advocates for women's sports saw them as a means of "producing a new woman who would be more aggressive, assertive, dominant, and less deferential, less graceful, and less oriented toward motherhood and traditional feminine graces." He argues that competitive sports can increase infertility and pushes colleges to replace sports like women's basketball and soccer with "group fitness classes, dance, yoga, recreational intramurals, hiking clubs, and the like" in order to "contribute to a healthier, more humane social order."
This week, the Heritage Foundation shared Kanter Freedom's announcement that he was declaring for the WNBA Draft and praised the move as "perfect" and a "provocative challenge." Not about basketball, but a debate about bodies.
There are good-faith discussions to be had about what exactly the eligibility requirements should be around transgender participation in sports at the elite levels, discussions that acknowledge biological differences, account for evolving scientific understandings of transgender athletes and respect the humanity of transgender people. There is no way to please everyone, but there is a way to create a pathway to inclusion, rather than blanket exclusion and demonization.
The WNBA now has the popularity and cultural capital to get those conversations back on track. It just needs to be extra careful about who's invited to the table.
