This is a crucial step in the long fight of Caster Semenya, a hyperandrogenic athlete, who hopes to “open the way for young women” so that they are not “dehumanized and discriminated against”.
Deprived of competition due to particularly high testosterone levels, South African Caster Semenya, 33, pleaded her case again on Wednesday before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Double Olympic champion (2012, 2016) and triple world champion (2009, 2011 and 2017) in the 800m, Caster Semenya naturally produces a lot of male hormones (androgens).
“Harmful and unnecessary treatment”
Since 2018, World Athletics, the international athletics federation, has required hyperandrogenic athletes to lower their testosterone levels through hormonal treatment in order to be able to participate in international competitions in the women’s category. What Caster Semenya refuses, thus deprived of running her favorite distance.
The South African had to choose between “safeguarding her personal integrity and dignity while being excluded from competition” or “undergoing harmful, unnecessary and supposedly corrective treatment,” said her lawyer, Schona Jolly. The lawyer repeated during the hearing that “Miss Semenya is a woman. At birth, she was assigned the female gender, legally and in fact.”
The athlete was banned from competition for eleven months and forced to undergo medical tests, the results of which remained secret, before finally being allowed to race again in July 2010.
“Discrimination” and “violation of privacy”
But in 2018, World Athletics regulations changed the situation. This regulation was validated the following year by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (based in Switzerland), then confirmed by the Federal Court of Lausanne, which in 2020 highlighted “the fairness of competitions” as a “cardinal principle of sport ”, on the grounds that a testosterone level comparable to that of men gives female athletes “an insurmountable advantage”.
The South African athlete’s appeals against these two decisions were rejected but she won her case before the ECHR on July 11, 2023. The court, which ensures compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights, found that Semenya had been the victim of discrimination and a violation of her privacy. However, the Swiss authorities, supported by World Athletics, referred the matter to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR, a sort of appeal body.
Decision in a few months
The Court’s decision, which will be final, “will have a profound impact on her personal and professional life, as well as on the lives and dignity of many other international sportswomen,” added Me Jolly.
“It’s not about my career, but about defending what is right, about raising the voice of those who cannot fight for themselves,” said Caster Semenya, who has not run since March 2023.
If the judgment rendered by the ECHR last summer constituted a first victory for Caster Semenya, it did not invalidate the World Athletics regulations. This long legal drama has an enormous financial cost for Caster Semenya, who launched an appeal for donations in February.