📢 Speakers confirmed!
🏅 Our online course on gender regulation in sport brings together leading experts and athletes to tackle the big questions of inclusion, fairness and human rights in international sport.

📅 15–17 Oct 2025
💻 Online via Zoom
🔗 Register now: bit.ly/45RGJsO

The Grand Chamber's decision not only says that World Athletics' female eligibility rules must be subjected to rigorous human rights review, but also suggests that their shaky evidentiary foundations and seriously harmful consequences make the rules unlikely to withstand future legal challenges.

The third blog by @michelekrech.bsky.social focuses on the impact of the #Semenya judgment on eligibility rules for female competitions arguing that it changes everything.

it is available at strasbourgobservers.com/2025/10/03/t...

#Sportslaw #DSDRegulations #WorldAthletics #CAS #ECtHR

NEW: Is It Time to Rethink the Binary in Sports?

In this episode, hosts @cfloed.bsky.social and @tomginsburg.bsky.social are joined by Michele Krech to unpack the human rights questions at stake in debates around gender and athletic competition.

Listen now:
open.spotify.com/episode/4ait...

Genetic sex testing in sport violates MANY laws - bioethics, genetic non-discrimination, data privacy, etc. - in MANY jurisdictions. These tests have no medical purpose, functioning instead as a discriminatory contractual condition, thus vitiating consent and misusing protected data. Read more:

World Athletics’ SRY DNA test mandate—tests due 1 Sep—breaches genetic-testing safeguards in many jurisdictions by forcing non-medical testing, tying eligibility to genes, coercing consent, and handing DNA to private bodies—inviting national challenges. Analysis: verfassungsblog.de/genetic-sex-...

World Athletics and World Boxing have instituted genetic sex testing as a precondition for competing in the women’s category.

SONE ERIKAINEN, KATRINA KARKAZIS (@karkazis.bsky.social‬) & MICHELE KRECH (@michelekrech.bsky.social‬) on the many legal pitfalls.

verfassungsblog.de/genetic-sex-...

@worldathletics.org's new female eligibility rules seem to violate Canada's Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, which prohibits requiring someone to undergo or disclose results of a genetic test as a condition of providing goods/services or entering into/continuing a contract/agreement. bit.ly/4m3WW3y

"States must ... protect the climate system and ... environment [by] taking mitigation and adaptation
measures, with due account given to the protection of human rights, the adoption of standards and
legislation, and the regulation of the activities of private actors."
shorturl.at/IYFJx

In sum: The Swiss court (and likewise the CAS) failed to address serious doubts about the reasonableness and proportionality of World Athletics' female eligibility regulations. Its review of Semenya's complaint was therefore not sufficiently rigorous, given the seriousness of the rights at stake.

Grand Chamber judgment Semenya v. Switzerland - the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to a fair hearing tinyurl.com/ymbwp8kw
#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRpress

So proud of this team!

I'm so thrilled to be joining the faculty of Lincoln Alexander School of Law!

www.torontomu.ca/law/news-eve...

There's still plenty of time to register for Wednesday's webinar. Click the link below to sign up and join this timely and important discussion. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
@cambup-law.bsky.social @asilorg.bsky.social @monicahakimi.bsky.social @michelekrech.bsky.social

Join @michelekrech.bsky.social, Bigelow Fellow, for an American Journal of International Law webinar exploring the challenges that women in sports confront, and how international institutions do and should respond.

Thrilled to see my article -- showing how a private organization has shaped, and diluted, an international human rights norm -- in AJIL! It shows how a global sport governing body has responded to legal challenges by retrofitting 'gender equality' to align with exclusionary regulatory practices.

A timely conversation hosted by @ajil.bsky.social. Please join us. @monicahakimi.bsky.social @lenaholzer.bsky.social