diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
index 96d070f76ae6..744c1acde6ac 100644
--- a/tox.ini
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -149,15 +149,10 @@ commands =
   coverage html --include='nova/*' --omit='nova/openstack/common/*' -d covhtml -i
 
 [testenv:venv]
-commands =
-  # TODO(sdague) this is a brute force work around for pip not respecting test-requirements.txt
-  pip install "sphinx!=1.2.0,!=1.3b1,<1.3,>=1.1.2"
-  {posargs}
+commands = {posargs}
 
 [testenv:docs]
 commands =
-  # TODO(sdague) this is a brute force work around for pip not respecting test-requirements.txt
-  pip install "sphinx!=1.2.0,!=1.3b1,<1.3,>=1.1.2"
   python setup.py build_sphinx
   bash -c '! find doc/ -type f -name *.json | xargs -t -n1 python -m json.tool 2>&1 > /dev/null | grep -B1 -v ^python'