The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favour of double 800m Olympic champion, Caster Semenya, in a case involving testosterone levels in female athletes.
The 32-year-old South African was born with differences of sexual development (DSD), and is not allowed to compete in any track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs.
A three-time 800m world champion and 800m and 1500m Commonwealth champion, Semenya, has been in a long-running dispute with World Athletics.
The EHCR ruling also found that the World Athletics’ DSD regulations were “a source of discrimination” for Semenya “by the manner in which they were exercised and by their effects,” and the regulations were “incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Regulations requiring her to have hormone treatment were introduced by the governing body in 2018. Semenya has twice failed in legal battles to overturn the decision.
However, the case at the ECHR was not against sporting bodies, but specifically against the government of Switzerland for not protecting Semenya’s rights and dates back to a Swiss Supreme Court ruling three years ago.
In a lengthy judgement published yesterday, the ECHR found out that the Swiss government did not protect Semenya from being discriminated against when its Supreme Court refused to overturn a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which upheld the World Athletics rules.
An ECHR statement read: “The court found in particular that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively, especially since her complaints concerned substantiated and credible claims of discrimination as a result of her increased testosterone level caused by differences of sex development.”
The decision, made by a panel of seven people at the ECHR, was split 4-3 in favour of Semenya and may allow her to challenge the Swiss Supreme Court or CAS rulings.
World Athletics described the ECHR chamber as “deeply divided” and said it will ask the Swiss government to refer the case to the ECHR Grand Chamber for a “final and definitive decision”.
World Athletics said: “We remain of the view that the DSD regulations are a necessary, reasonable and proportionate means of protecting fair competition in the female category as the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Swiss Federal Tribunal both found, after a detailed and expert assessment of the evidence.
“We will liaise with the Swiss government on the next steps. In the meantime, the current DSD regulations, approved by the World Athletics Council in March 2023, will remain in place.” –BBC
