Olympian Caster Semenya wins appeal as human rights court calls testosterone rule discriminatory

Peter Sblendorio, New York Daily News
2 min read
0

A human rights court on Tuesday sided with Olympic runner Caster Semenya, saying a rule requiring her to lower her natural testosterone levels to participate in women’s events is discriminatory.

The European Court of Human Rights voted 4-3 in favor of Semenya’s appeal and expressed “serious questions” about the rule, which the World Athletics organization started enforcing in 2019.

World Athletics claims Semenya, who was legally identified as female when she was born and identifies as a woman, has an unfair advantage due to a differences in sex development (DSD) condition that gives her higher testosterone levels. Semenya, who won the women’s 800 meters at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, declined to lower her testosterone levels and has repeatedly pushed back against the regulation.

The South African-born Semenya, 32, previously lost appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2019 and Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court in 2020. She submitted her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in 2021.

Tuesday’s decision did not change World Athletics’ stance on its regulations and thus has not cleared Semenya to resume competing.

“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,” World Athletics said in a statement.

World Athletics’ rules previously applied to races between 400 meters and a mile, but the organization introduced new regulations in March that include all events. Semenya competed in the 5000-meter event at the world championships last year, finishing in 13th place.

Semenya won three women’s 800 meters titles at the World Athletics Championships between 2009 and 2017. She did not attend the 2020 Olympics but hopes to compete at the Summer Games in Paris next year.

With News Wire Services

Advertisement

Recommended Stories

  • Sam Bankman-Fried Traded In His $35 Million Mansion In The Bahamas For A Prison Cell With 35 Inmates But Claims "He Did Not Do Anything Wrong"

    Formerly disgraced FTX CEO and Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted in November of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His high-profile trial marked a significant chapter in the unraveling of FTX, which collapsed under suspicious financial practices, leading to intense scrutiny and legal action. For the first time since his incarceration, Bankman-Fried described his daily life in a detailed interview with journalist William D. Cohan of Puck. Do

  • Charles Schwab website ‘is a mess’: Hundreds of TD Ameritrade users complain about their new online home.

    “It wouldn’t surprise me if they see an outflow of clients over the next six months,” one user told MarketWatch.

  • Homes are overvalued in much of the U.S. — with these 5 states leading the list

    Home prices are overvalued nationally, according to a new report by Fitch Ratings, led by Southern states.

  • Nvidia Recently Bought 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks, and 1 Is Absolutely Soaring

    Nvidia is spreading some of its recently amassed wealth by investing in smaller AI companies.

  • Exclusive-Bank of America banker who died had sought to leave, citing long hours, recruiter says

    The 35-year-old Bank of America investment banker who died from a blood clot earlier this month wanted to leave the U.S. bank because he was working more than 100 hours a week, according to an executive recruiter who spoke with him about seeking a new job. Junior banker Leo Lukenas III died of an acute coronary artery thrombus, a type of blood clot, the New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said last week. Lukenas said in mid-March that he wanted to leave Bank of America because of the grueling hours, Douglas Walters, a managing partner at GrayFox Recruitment, told Reuters in an interview.

  • Seeking 12% Dividend Yield? Analysts Suggest 2 Dividend Stocks to Buy

    Now that we’ve had time to digest the April jobs numbers, some strategists are getting worried about the economy’s mid-term outlook. The jobs report showed 175,000 new jobs added in the month – but that was the lowest gain in the past six months, and was accompanied by an uptick in unemployment, from 3.8% to 3.9%. Along with these topline numbers, the report showed declines in job openings and hires. For Roukaya Ibrahim, watching the US economy from BCA, this job report may indicate a shift towa

  • The 3M Dividend Cut Is Here. It’s Big.

    STOCKSTOWATCHTODAY BLOG It’s official. 3M cut its dividend significantly. The materials company declared a dividend of 70 cents per share on Tuesday evening. That’s down from the prior quarter’s dividend of $1.

  • Smartphones Are About to Get an AI Boost. Here Are the Stocks to Play the Revolution.

    “You could almost argue that the smartphone is becoming a little bit closer to a washing machine than the cutting-edge, rapidly changing device category that it used to be,” says Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, a technology research firm. Samsung Electronics and Alphabet Google, which have spent years partnering on mobile phones—and the Android software that powers them—see a silver bullet in the form of artificial intelligence. “This new era of AI is a profound opportunity to make smartphones truly smart,” Sameer Samat, Google’s vice president of product management for Android, said during the Google I/O developers conference on Tuesday.

  • What is a high-net-worth individual?

    High-net-worth individuals, those with net worths of $1 million or more and liquid assets, take different approaches to finance than others.

  • Walmart lays off hundreds of employees and requires others to relocate

    Walmart on Tuesday announced layoffs affecting several hundred jobs at the retail giant’s campus offices. It also said it will require most remote workers and personnel in its Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto offices to relocate to its primary offices in Bentonville, Arkansas; Hoboken, New Jersey; and the San Francisco Bay Area. The news, conveyed via a Walmart staff memo provided to The Associated Press, said the relocations will serve the goal of “bringing more of us together more often.”