Tara Moore has accused the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) of failing to adequately warn players about the risk of contaminated meat at one of their tournaments amid her ongoing four-year ban from the sport.
The former British No.1 in doubles has filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, accusing the governing body of causing ‘negligence that ruined her career.’ Moore was provisionally banned from tennis in May 2022 after testing positive for the prohibited substances boldenone and nandrolone at a tournament in Colombia. Her suspension was then lifted in December 2023 when an independent panel concluded that contaminated meat was the source of her failed test and she bore no fault.
However, the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) then appealed against that decision of no guilt to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The majority of the CAS panel sided with the ITIA and their argument that the player failed to ‘prove that the concentration of nandrolone in her sample was consistent with the ingestion of contaminated meat.’ Moore was then banned again for four years, starting from July 2025, with 19 months deducted due to the length of her provisional suspension already served.
Moore, who has always denied any wrongdoing, is now taking on the WTA. In a lawsuit that was filed on February 12th, her legal team are ‘seeking to vacate a November 2025 arbitration award.’ An arbitration award is the final legally binding decision made by an arbitrator or tribunal to resolve a dispute.
“The action, brought by King & Spalding and Reeves & Weiss, claims the WTA failed to warn athletes about contaminated meat risks in Bogotá, Colombia, leading to the player’s positive steroid test in April 2022, despite issuing similar warnings for other locations. The suit, which seeks $20 million in damages, argues that an initial tribunal’s exoneration was improperly reversed by a CAS panel that applied incorrect legal standards,” a summary of the case reads.
In her hearing with the CAS, Moore said three out of 21 samples taken at the Colombian event contained steroids and the WTA should have investigated. However, the panel cut down the number to two because one of the samples in question had levels of boldanone metabolites that were so low it couldn’t be analyzed. The other positive sample belonged to Chile’s Barbara Gatica, who was also suspended.
The CAS subsequently ruled that they can’t see how ‘this situation could create any obligation on ITIA (or the WTA) to warn the player against eating meat in Colombia prior to the Copa Colsanitas tournament.’
Daniel Weiss, who is Moore’s lawyer, recently told The New York Post that she was a victim of tennis’s flawed anti-doping system. All anti-doping hearings are conducted by a panel of independent experts in the field.
“Tara Moore is a victim twice over: first of the WTA’s negligence, and then of a fundamentally flawed anti-doping system that presumed she was guilty without any evidence of wrongdoing,” Weiss told The New York Post.
“All this petition asks is for a federal court to ensure Tara gets what she was always promised: a fair hearing based on evidence, not a presumption of guilt,” he added.
Weiss’s and Moore’s main argument is that the WTA tournament fact sheet for the event where she tested positive didn’t issue a warning about contaminated meat. Even though a month prior, men’s player Robert Farah failed a test in the same country, which was proven to be linked to meat contamination.
In a statement to the NY Post, the WTA acknowledged the ongoing case.
“The arbitration was conducted by a neutral arbitrator, and there is no basis to vacate the arbitrator’s award,” the WTA said. “We respect the judicial process and will not comment further while the matter is pending.”
Moore is a former world No.77 in doubles and world No.145 in singles.
