WASHINGTON (TNND) — Three GOP Congress members sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, urging the league to define “women” for eligibility standards after former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White said they identified as women and declared themselves eligible to join.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., led the letter sent Thursday and was joined by fellow Indiana GOP Rep. Erin Houchin and Rep. Sheri Biggs, R-S.C., OutKick reported.
The Congress members sent the letter after multiple confrontations occurred during WNBA games over whether biological men identifying as women could compete in the league.
The issue of transgender athletes in the WNBA erupted after Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said in July that female athletes should not have to compete against biological men.
In August, a WNBA task force made up of team presidents and general managers discussed transgender athletes but did not announce any new eligibility rules.
“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,” the league said in a statement.
There has never been an openly transgender player in the WNBA.
Kanter Freedom and White said they identified as women and planned to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft, appearing to try to force the league to directly address the issue of trans athletes. According to reports, WNBA sources said that the two men were ineligible for the draft.
In light of these events, the Congress members wrote to Engelbert, saying, “On top of the already concerning lack of will to enforce basic player and fan protections, we are also concerned by the WNBA’s lack of eligibility standards, which are at the heart of these verbal confrontations. Article XIII, Section 1(a) of the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement states: ‘Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.’ However, the agreement does not define ‘women.’
“Individuals including Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White announced their intent to join the 2027 WNBA draft by identifying as ‘women,’ yet have been deemed ineligible by the WNBA. This action indicates the League certainly understands the biological difference between men and women, and has even gone so far as to enforce that distinction when deciding eligibility,” the lawmakers continued.
“As a women’s sports league, the WNBA must ensure the League remains exclusively for biological women. As Sophie Cunningham has commented, women should not have to face biological men playing in the WNBA. Opening eligibility to biological men would not only create an unfair advantage but would also risk player safety for the women playing in the WNBA.”
The letter was sent after Engelbert announced earlier this month that she will retire at the end of the year after more than seven years as commissioner, and the WNBA has already started searching for her successor.
The lawmakers asked Engelbert to answer several questions about WNBA policy by Oct. 16, including how the league defines “women,” and if it doesn’t have a definition, then to provide an explanation as to why Kanter Freedom and White were ineligible to join.
The letter comes after Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a civil rights attorney who won three Olympic gold medals in swimming in 1984, started a petition last month calling for the WNBA to enact female-only eligibility criteria. The petition has nearly 21,000 verified signatures and has been endorsed by former NBA player Charles Barkley.
“We urge the WNBA to restrict eligibility to biological women who have been female since birth,” the petition reads.
“This is consistent with the International Olympic Committee, the NCAA, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, World Aquatics, and World Athletics, and is consistent with other sport categories that are strictly enforced – including age, weight, equipment, and drug testing. The female category should be enforced through sex screening, as the Women’s Tennis Association, another all-female professional league, now does.”
Hogshead-Makar told The National News Desk on Thursday that the “fight to get the WNBA to define ‘women’ for eligibility for being in it is part of a bigger, global effort to get gender ideology out of competition, locker rooms, and private spaces.”
She said that female sports “can either wait for someone like Lia Thomas to win the NCAA championship or do it preventatively,” referring to the transgender swimmer.
“It’s not about one person, it’s the point of it, the issue of it,” Hogshead-Makar said, and that women have “worked really hard to create our own spaces and sports.”
The former Olympian noted how important this issue is ahead of the midterm elections.
“Fifty percent of all high school girls play sports,” she said, noting that that includes “a lot of people” in those families “who vote.”
“People think it’s a fringe issue,” and that housing or homelessness is more important, Hogshead-Makar said, but noted that it is a “right in front of you issue that is biological reality,” and “being able to have free speech rights — to be able to say someone is male or female — to lose that, to have compelled speech, is a terrible thing.”
She added that she’s a Democrat, a feminist, and has “been liberal,” but that people like her “aren’t getting media coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the Chicago Tribune.”
“It’d be fair for other Democrats to think it is not a big issue and there’s lockstep agreement in the feminist community,” Hogshead-Makar said, but it’s “not true, we just can’t get coverage.”
Last week, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico told Fox News regarding men in women’s sports, “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness.”
“Every sport has to be safe and fair. As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes. I care a lot about our students. And so, I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness,” he said.
While serving on the Texas House Public Education Committee in 2021, Talarico opposed SB 29, which sought to require public school athletes to compete in sports based on the biological sex listed on their birth certificate. At the time, he called the issue a “manufactured problem.” Later that year, Talarico voted against HB 25, which enacted similar restrictions on school sports into Texas law.
Hogshead-Makar said in a statement, “Democrat James Talarico’s public shift shows this is not a partisan debate. It is an 80/20 common-sense issue. I underwent sex verification before competing in the Olympics. The fact that the WNBA has taken this long to clarify its rules and ensure that only biological women can compete in the league speaks volumes.”
She told The National News Desk that “women athletes really want this testing” to ensure that only women compete in female sports.
Hogshead-Makar also said that acknowledging the differences between the biological sexes of male and female is not a left-versus-right issue in other countries. She noted that the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court said that “sex refers to biology, not identity,” which was “done by women, left-wing women.”
“In the U.S., if we don’t have more Democrats speaking on this issue, it’s a loss for Democrats, because the public sees it as a serious voting issue,” she said, adding that “it’s so easy to dismiss this as ‘this person’s a Trumper.'”