In a landmark case for athletes' rights, Caster Semenya, the star South African runner, won her case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Human Rights Watch said today. The court ruled on July 10, 2025, that theprocess before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the judicial review afforded by Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court regarding sporting regulations on her eligibility to compete were inadequate to protect her rights.
Semenya had challenged regulations imposed by World Athletics, the global track and field governing body, that bar women with certain Differences of Sex Development (DSD) from competing in the female category unless they undergo medically unnecessary intervention to lower their natural testosterone levels. These regulations have long been criticized as scientifically dubious, invasive, and discriminatory.
"Caster Semenya is South Africa's three-time world track champion, and is used to winning," said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. "And after years of challenging systemic abuse of women athletes and her exclusion from sport on human rights grounds, she may have experienced her most important victory before the European court."
The World Athletics regulations require women like Semenya, whose naturally occurring testosterone levels associated with specific sex development diagnoses fall above a set threshold, to reduce those levels to compete in specific events. These regulations, in effect since 2019, continue a long and damaging legacy of sex testing in sport.
Sports governing bodies contended that the 2019 regulations broke from the past 50 years of testing women athletes to confirm their sex. The practice was humiliating, degrading, and discriminatory and among other harm scrutinized women athletes' bodies for conformity to arbitrary and subjective standards of femininity. However, Human Rights Watch research found that the revised regulations still subject women athletes to sex eligibility criteria that retain these negative, rights-abusing consequences.
World Athletics' rules make the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the mandatory and exclusive jurisdiction for disputes, meaning that Semenya had no choice about where to begin her case. Unsuccessful in arbitration, she then appealed to Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court, which rejected her appeal on narrow grounds. Finally, she took her case to the ECtHR and won. Its Grand Chamber ruling is the final stage of these proceedings.
Although the European Court's finding is one of procedural failings, the significance of the ruling is far-reaching, Human Rights Watch said. The court explicitly expressed concern over the deeply unequal relationship between the athletes and the bodies that regulate international sport. One of the court's judges explicitly emphasized in her opinion that Semenya "was at a disadvantage vis-à-vis [World Athletics], not only as a professional athlete.... but also because she is a woman, she is black, and she is from the Global South."
The court in essence found that the regulations, which impose severe interference with the athletes' privacy rights, have never been properly assessed for whether they are necessary or proportionate under international human rights law, because the tribunals that Semenya had appeared before had not carried out a sufficiently rigorous review.
While the CAS acknowledged the regulations impact on fundamental rights and human dignity, it failed to give those considerations proper weight when deciding if the regulations should stand, the European court found. And the Supreme Court's review was too technical and narrow to remedy that fatal flaw. As a result, neither World Athletics nor the International Olympic Committee has had to prove the compatibility of the regulations with human rights norms.
Human Rights Watch research has shown that the sex testing regulations are arbitrary, invasive, and degrading, and included its findings in a joint submission to the human rights court in Semenya's case with the expert scholarsPayoshni Mitra and Katrina Karkazis. Such regulations harm all women athletes by perpetuating arbitrary scrutiny of women's bodies in ways that are degrading and invasive of privacy, on grounds that are scientifically contested. Human Rights Watch said such regulations are also incompatible with respect for women's rights to bodily integrity, freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, dignity, and non-discrimination.
The language used by the majority of the court in its judgment leaves little doubt about their negative view of the regulations for the harm they impose on women athletes and skepticism as to World Athletics' alleged justifications for them, Human Rights Watch said. While they declined to rule on whether the regulations themselves violate the European Convention on Human Rights, citing Switzerland's lack of responsibility for their adoption, four judges in the majority criticized the court for not doing more, stating that it had "failed to fulfill its role."
While the court may not have struck down the regulations, a good faith reading can consider the judgment a fatal blow, Human Rights Watch said. At a minimum, World Athletics needs to suspend all application of the regulations until an independent and impartial tribunal conducts a rigorous review, using the appropriate standards necessary to protect the athletes' fundamental rights, including those to private life and non-discrimination. And taking into account the critical tone of the court with respect to the regulations, World Athletics, in the interest of athletes, and in recognition of all available research that undermines credibility in the objective or scientific nature of the regulations, should drop the regulations and their quest to impose sex testing for women, Human Rights Watch said.
"International sporting bodies have shown scant regard for international human rights norms in setting these regulations, as if they are exempt from human rights standards," Worden said. "Caster Semenya's victory is a victory for all women and all athletes because the European Court found that the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Swiss Federal Tribunal had failed to uphold human rights norms despite credible claims of discrimination."
