Discussing the WTA’s new required genetic testing

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This past weekend, I ran a GLTA World Tour event, part of a circuit that celebrates those who mostly identify as LGBTQ+. Then, as Finals Day completed, some news came out targeting a population of those players.

A new report this weekend revealed that the WTA has quietly enacted a new “Women’s Eligibility Policy” requiring every single player on tour to undergo genetic sex testing to keep her spot in professional tennis. The policy reportedly took effect July 1, and the WTA confirmed it publicly hours after the news broke, publishing the updated policy to its website.

Let’s break down what’s actually happening here, because the details matter and because underneath the clinical language of “eligibility” and “screening,” this is a policy built on a transphobic premise, applied to every woman on tour.

What is the test in question?

The new policy replaces the WTA’s old testosterone-based eligibility framework with a one-time genetic screening for the SRY gene (a small stretch of DNA, usually located on the Y chromosome) that triggers testes development in a fetus. It’s administered via a cheek swab and, per the WTA, only needs to happen once in a player’s career, since genetic makeup doesn’t change over a lifetime.

If a player screens negative for SRY, she’s cleared to compete, indefinitely. If she screens positive, she’s barred from competition unless she can demonstrate she has a condition like Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, meaning her body never responded to the testosterone surges that typically occur in infancy (“mini-puberty”) or adolescence. In effect: any detectable male-typical hormonal exposure at any point in a woman’s life, even in the first six months after birth, could now disqualify her from playing professional tennis.

This is a dramatic shift from the WTA’s 2024 policy, which required a testosterone threshold under 2.5 nmol/L, sustained for two years, and only applied to athletes who had self-declared as transgender or non-binary, or who the WTA had “reasonable grounds” to investigate. That policy explicitly did not require surgery or legal gender recognition, and it opened with language affirming the tour’s commitment to a supportive environment for trans and intersex athletes. The new policy strips that framing entirely and applies to everyone, regardless of any self-declaration.

One more detail worth sitting with: the 2024 policy was governed by New York law. The new one is governed by Florida law, with any legal challenges required to go through courts in St. Petersburg (a state, and a legal environment, considerably friendlier to this kind of restriction).

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Why this matters (and why it’s transphobic)

Here’s the thing nobody should lose sight of: there is not one transgender woman currently playing professional tennis at the WTA level, and there hasn’t been in nearly 50 years. The last was Renee Richards, who won a legal battle to compete in the 1970s, made a Grand Slam doubles final at 43, and retired without inspiring a single successor. The WTA is not solving a real problem. It has imagined a threat to the sport it governs, and is building an entire mandatory testing infrastructure, applied to hundreds of athletes worldwide, to guard against it. That gap, between the scale of the policy and the total absence of any case to justify it, is itself telling.

What genetic screening does do, reliably, is put some cisgender women in a difficult situation. Sex isn’t as tidy a binary as blanket cheek-swab policies pretend it is, and intersex variations occur in a small but real percentage of the population. Women who have lived their entire lives as girls and women (competed as girls and women, been raised as girls and women) can and have tested positive for genetic markers they never knew existed, learning about it for the first time under the glare of a sport’s disciplinary process. Research on Olympic-era sex verification programs, dating back decades, has documented exactly this kind of fallout: no actual “impostors” were ever caught, but real athletes with rare genetic variations suffered lasting stigma and trauma. The WTA’s own new policy acknowledges this risk, promising counseling for affected players and confidentiality safeguards. It’s a tacit admission that the tour knows this system is going to hurt someone, and is choosing to move forward anyway.

That’s the part that makes this feel less like a fairness measure and more like a policy shaped by a broader political mood. A rule engineered to root out an athlete who doesn’t exist, at the cost of subjecting every woman on tour (including intersex women who have always competed as women) to genetic surveillance, isn’t really about protecting anyone. It’s about signaling.

And it’s worth naming plainly what’s driving this. The WTA is not obligated to follow the Olympic movement’s rules; it’s a fully independent tour. But it chose to align itself with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which adopted its own SRY screening requirement this past March under the banner of “protecting the female category,” following bans already enacted by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the NCAA, both of which followed pressure from the Trump administration’s executive order targeting trans athletes in women’s sports. The WTA becoming, by all accounts, the first independent women’s pro sports tour to mandate genetic testing for its entire membership isn’t a coincidence of timing. It’s a tour deciding to import a political moral panic into its rulebook and to build permanent testing infrastructure around a talking point.

It’s also worth remembering who tends to amplify this issue loudest, and how disconnected that noise is from the reality of the sport. Outside of a handful of retired players turned vocal culture-war commentators, active WTA players are rarely asked about this topic and rarely raise it unprompted, because it isn’t something they encounter. The volume of the discourse around trans athletes in tennis has never matched its relevance to the actual tour.

Tennis has real, tangible problems: prize money disparities, scheduling that runs players into the ground, a calendar that punishes the sport’s own stars. This policy solves none of them. Instead, it puts every woman on tour through a genetic test she didn’t ask for, to guard against a player who doesn’t exist — while opening the door to real harm for the intersex and gender-variant women who do.

Now, on to links.

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This Week in Women’s Tennis

Barbora Krejčíková took home her ninth WTA singles title at the Vanda Pharmaceuticals Athens Open, defeating local Maria Sakkari in the championship. The doubles title was won by Angel Chan and Miyu Kato over Maia Lumsden and Tang Qianhui.

At the Iasi Open in Romania, Mayar Sherif won the title after Paula Badosa retired in the second set of their final. In doubles, Anastasia Dețiuc and Irina Khromacheva downed Alina Charaeva and Zhibek Kulambayeva.

Lanlana Tararudee, Sinja Kraus and Francesca Jones all captured WTA 125s this past week.

Aryna Sabalenka has become just the 10th women’s player in history to top the WTA rankings for 100 weeks.

Karolína Muchová will miss a few weeks, including Toronto, following a small surgery.

Kayla Cross has clinched a wildcard into the National Bank Open after capturing the women’s prize of the Road to the NBO.

The Intercollegiate Tennis Association announced two hirings for managers of the divisions that fall below Division I.

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Tweet of the Week

Congratulations to Daria Kasatkina, who married her partner Natalia Zabiiako in an Athens, Greece ceremony this past weekend:

https://twitter.com/DKasatkina/status/2077716844949938626

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Soccer: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tennis: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Basketball: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Softball: Maren Angus-Coombs, @Maren-Angus, The IX Sports
Golf: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Hockey: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Gymnastics: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer