'Blade Runner' Lawyers to Represent Semenya in Gender Dispute
Having helped a double-amputee win the right to compete with able-bodied runners in track-and-field events on prosthetic legs, Dewey & LeBoeuf is now representing another South African athlete in a controversial dispute about whether she is qualified to compete as a woman.
Caster Semenya, who has higher-than-normal levels of testerone, recently made headlines both when the 18-year-old won an 800-meter gold medal in the world track and field championships in Berlin last month and when subsequent gender tests reportedly revealed that she may have both female and male sexual characteristics, according to Legal Week and the London Times.
Dewey’s South African managing partner, Greg Nott, and global litigation co-chair Jeff Kessler, who is based in New York, are representing Semenya on a pro bono basis concerning civil and human-rights issues raised both by the controversy over her gender and the public revelation of personal medical information.
At issue, concerning her gender, is whether the International Association of Athletics Federations should potentially ban her from competition or require that she obtain treatment to lower her testosterone levels in order to participate.
Kessler tells the legal publication that he hopes the IAAF has learned from its experience with the so-called blade runner, South African double amputee Oscar Pistorius, who was initially banned from competition. “We look forward to working with it to ensure a just outcome here for Semenya,” he says. “The world will be watching.”
Additional and related coverage:
Agence France-Presse: “Let Semenya run, says India’s sex test case”
Associated Press: “When someone is raised female and the genes say XY”
Boston Globe: “No easy solution in gender case”
National Post: “Caster Semenya: Could the story get any weirder?”
