{"id":24351,"date":"2025-07-10T17:02:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valloni.ch\/2025\/07\/10\/athletics-caster-semenya-case\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T17:02:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:02:13","slug":"athletics-caster-semenya-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valloni.ch\/de\/2025\/07\/10\/athletics-caster-semenya-case\/","title":{"rendered":"ATHLETICS: CASTER SEMENYA CASE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The South African Olympic champion runner, Caster Semenya, has won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights, in a judgement handed down on10 July 2025, in her long legal fight against the World Athletics sex eligibility rules.<\/p>\n

In a majority ruling of 15-2, the Grand Chamber of the European Court has held that some of her rights to a fair hearing were infringed by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, to which she had lodged an appeal\u00a0against an Award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in favour of World Athletics, and also awarded her \u20ac80,000 in respect of legal cost and expenses.<\/p>\n

After pointing out the structural imbalance which characterised the relationship between sportspersons and the sport governing bodies, the Court then held that respect for the applicant\u2019s right to a fair hearing had required a \u201cparticularly rigorous examination of … her case<\/strong>\u201d for the following three reasons: (1) the CAS\u2019s mandatory and exclusive jurisdiction had been imposed on her, not by law but by a sport governing body; (2) the dispute concerned one or more \u201ccivil\u201d rights; and (3) those rights corresponded, in domestic law, to fundamental rights. In the Court\u2019s view, the specific characteristics of the sports arbitration to which the applicant had been subject \u2013 entailing the CAS\u2019s mandatory and exclusive jurisdiction \u2013 had required a rigorous judicial review that was commensurate with the seriousness of the personal rights at issue, by the only domestic court with jurisdiction to carry out such a task. The Court considered, however, that the Federal Supreme Court\u2019s review had fallen short of that requirement, on account, in particular, of its restrictive interpretation of the notion of public policy, within the meaning of the Federal Act on Private International Law. Accordingly, the Court found that Ms Semenya had not benefited from the safeguards provided for in Article 6 \u00a7 1 of the Convention, given the Federal Supreme Court\u2019s failure to fulfil the requirement to carry out a particularly rigorous examination<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This will have a major impact on all proceedings before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in such constellations.<\/p>\n

The European Court ruling is available at https:\/\/hudoc.echr.coe.int\/?i=001-244348<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her case will now be now most probably referred again to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in a revision proceeding.<\/p>\n

The European Court judgement does not overturn the World Athletics eligibility rules, but it does raise issues regarding the impartiality of CAS and ICAS, its international governing body. See paras. 203 and 204 of the judgement.<\/p>\n

It will be very interesting to see what happens next in this 7-year legal saga to date!<\/p>\n

We advise on all aspects of eligibility rules of International Sports Federations and we represent athtles in proceedings before the Swiss Federal Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. Further information is available from Dr Lucien Valloni by emailing him at valloni@valloni.ch<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African Olympic champion runner, Caster Semenya, has won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights, in a judgement handed down on10 July 2025, in her long legal fight against the World Athletics sex eligibility rules. In a majority ruling of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-de"],"yoast_head":"\nATHLETICS: CASTER SEMENYA CASE - Valloni<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/valloni.ch\/de\/2025\/07\/10\/athletics-caster-semenya-case\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ATHLETICS: CASTER SEMENYA CASE - Valloni\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The South African Olympic champion runner, Caster Semenya, has won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights, in a judgement handed down on10 July 2025, in her long legal fight against the World Athletics sex eligibility rules. 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