Dr. Renee Richards v. United States Tennis Association

Dr. Renee Richards (plaintiff), a transgender woman, underwent sex-reassignment surgery at the age of 41. Richards had always felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. Presurgery, Richards participated on the men’s tennis circuit and experienced a good deal of success. After her surgery, Richards began participating in the women’s circuit, winning two tournaments and reaching the finals of one at the age of 43. In 1976, after Richards applied to play in women’s singles in the U.S. Open, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) (defendant) began using a sex-chromatin test, known as the Barr body test, to determine eligibility for women’s tournaments. The test identified the presence of a second X chromosome, as opposed to an X and Y chromosome. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) (defendant) refused to rank Richards as a woman tennis professional, which made her ineligible for the U.S. Open women’s tournament. Up until 1976, no sex-determination test had been used. The USTA and WTA maintained that the test was needed to ensure competitive fairness, dictated by biology, and submitted numerous affidavits from physicians attesting to how a Y chromosome confers athletic advantages. Richards submitted numerous affidavits from physicians and medical experts in support of her claims that she was a female by all measures, she enjoyed no competitive advantage, and the use of the Barr body test was grossly inadequate in determining who is a female. Richards sought a preliminary injunction, contending that she was being discriminated against in violation of the New York Human Rights Law, which made it unlawful to discriminate against an individual on the basis of sex or disability (§ 296) and declared that the state had the responsibility to ensure that every individual was afforded equal opportunity to enjoy a full and productive life (§ 290).