A Georgia mother and her 17-year-old daughter say a security guard at an Atlanta WNBA game gave them an ultimatum, cover their XX-XY Athletics T-shirts or get escorted out of the building, after another fan reportedly complained.
Kasey Thomason and her daughter Annie were sitting just rows from the court at State Farm Arena on Sunday, August 16, watching the Indiana Fever take on the Atlanta Dream in a game that went to overtime. Halfway through that overtime period, a security guard walked up and told them their shirts had to go. The guard said other fans found the shirts offensive. The choice: pull on Atlanta Dream promotional shirts handed to them on the spot, or leave the arena.
The Thomasons complied. They covered their shirts and stayed for the final minutes of a game the Fever won 95, 91. But the episode, caught briefly on the ESPN broadcast, raises a pointed question about whose expression gets policed inside WNBA arenas, and whose does not.
Kasey Thomason wore an XX-XY Athletics shirt featuring Indiana Fever player Sophie Cunningham. Annie, 17, wore a Riley Gaines collaborative design, "XX" on the front, "For the Girls" on the back. XX-XY Athletics, founded by Jen Sey, sells apparel tied to the movement to keep women's sports and athletic spaces reserved for biological females.
When the security guard approached, Kasey asked whether the issue was their shirts. It was. She told Fox News Digital:
"Biology and science is offensive?"
The guard offered no further explanation. He handed them tan Atlanta Dream "Wellness & Health Night" shirts and repeated the terms: put them on or leave.
By roughly two and a half minutes left in overtime, the ESPN broadcast showed both Thomasons holding the Dream shirts, talking to fans around them. By the 1:30 mark, both had pulled the promotional shirts over their own.
Annie Thomason later spoke with conservative YouTuber Adam Francisco about what happened. She pointed to a woman sitting courtside who had been wearing a "Protect Trans Rights" T-shirt, the same woman who had earlier appeared on the arena's video board during the game.
Annie told Francisco:
"She was the one that told on us."
After the Thomasons covered their shirts, that same courtside woman turned to them and said, "I like your shirt", a remark Kasey described as mocking. The Thomasons said they are unsure whether security ever asked the woman in the "Protect Trans Rights" shirt to cover hers. They noted that by the end of the game, the woman's jacket was zipped up, but they could not confirm whether security had intervened.
So one fan wore a shirt declaring a political position on gender identity and sat courtside without incident. Two fans wore shirts referencing biological sex, the letters XX and XY, which denote female and male chromosomes, and got an ultimatum from security. The arena did not treat the two messages the same way.
The irony of the setting deserves attention. The Dream hosted the game as part of their "Wellness & Health Night," a partnership with Emory Healthcare. The team's own promotional language said the event would "use the power of sport to improve health outcomes for women and girls across Georgia." A joint statement from the Dream and Emory Healthcare declared that "sports can become one of the most powerful vehicles for improving women's health."
On a night dedicated to women and girls, a mother and her teenage daughter were told their pro-women's-sports shirts were too offensive to display.
Kasey and Annie Thomason are Georgia locals. They bought tickets to see the Fever play. They wore shirts supporting a female athlete, Sophie Cunningham, and a cause rooted in the straightforward biological distinction between male and female. The shirts carried no profanity, no slurs, no explicit language.
State Farm Arena's prohibited items list bans "clothing, garments or signs displaying explicit language, profanity or derogatory characterization towards any person(s)." The NBA Fan Code of Conduct, which the arena applies, states that "obscene or indecent messages on signs or clothing will not be permitted."
Neither "XX" nor "XY" is profanity. Neither is obscene. Neither targets any individual. The phrase "For the Girls" is not a slur. If the security guard applied these rules to justify the demand, the application stretched far past the written text. If the guard acted on a complaint alone, without any policy basis, then a paying customer's right to sit in her seat wearing a lawful shirt was overridden by another fan's feelings.
Fox News Digital and OutKick reached out to the Atlanta Dream for comment. No response was included in their reporting.
The Thomason incident did not happen in a vacuum. Less than a month before the August 16 game, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted two teenagers wearing XX-XY Athletics T-shirts courtside at a Storm game. One of the teenagers cried. Keaton was subsequently suspended for five games and fined an undisclosed amount, though the reporting does not specify whether the WNBA or the Storm itself imposed that discipline.
Two incidents involving the same brand of shirt, at two different WNBA arenas, within weeks of each other. In one, a team co-owner confronted minors. In the other, arena security gave a mother and daughter an ultimatum during overtime. Both times, the fans targeted were women and girls expressing support for female-only athletic competition.
Meanwhile, XX-XY Athletics founder Jen Sey has been photographed posing courtside with Riley Gaines and Sophie Cunningham after an Indiana Fever game. The brand is not underground. Its message is not hidden. It sells shirts that say what millions of Americans believe: biological sex is real, and women's sports should be for women.
Several facts remain unclear. The security guard's name and employer, whether he worked for State Farm Arena, the Dream, or a third-party contractor, have not been disclosed. The specific policy he cited, if any, has not been identified. No one has confirmed which fan or fans complained, or what exactly they told security. And no one has explained why a "Protect Trans Rights" shirt apparently drew no similar enforcement.
The Dream's silence is itself a statement. A WNBA franchise hosted a night dedicated to women's health, then allowed security to tell a mother and her teenage daughter that supporting female-only sports was too offensive for the building. If the team disagrees with how its staff handled the situation, it has had every opportunity to say so.
When a league treats chromosomes as contraband and political slogans as protected speech, it is not enforcing a code of conduct. It is enforcing a point of view.
