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South African Olympic runner Caster Semenya has won an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over testosterone limits for female athletes, CNN reports.
Since 2019, Semenya, a three-time 800m world champion, has been fighting against rules by World Athletics, track and field's governing body, which regulate hormone levels in female athletes.
Semenya is hyperandrogenous, which means she has naturally high levels of testosterone. She previously won gold medals in the 800m race at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics but was unable to defend her crown in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics because the rule change would require her to take testosterone-reducing medication, which she declined to do.
Semenya lost her first appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the rule in April 2019. In September 2020, her appeal to Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court failed but she pledged to continue the “fight for the human rights of female athletes.”
The star athlete then appealed to the ECHR in February 2021, saying Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court "failed" to uphold her human rights by denying her appeal.
In its ruling in favor of Semenya's appeal, ECHR said Tuesday (July 11) there had been a “violation of the prohibition of discrimination taken together with the right to respect for private life as well as a violation of the right to an effective remedy.”
World Athletics responded to the ruling in a statement to CNN, saying that while it notes the judgment of ECHR, current regulations will remain in place.
“We remain of the view that the DSD [differences in sex development] 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,” World Athletics said. “The case was filed against the state of Switzerland, rather than World Athletics. We will liaise with the Swiss Government on the next steps and, given the strong dissenting views in the decision, we will be encouraging them to seek referral of the case to the ECHR Grand Chamber for a final and definitive decision.
“In the meantime, the current DSD regulations, approved by the World Athletics Council in March 2023, will remain in place."
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