From discredited to prohibited: a legal angle to the history of genetic sex testing in sport and its implications in the present context

This article provides a historical examination of the re-emergence of genetic sex testing in international athletics, focusing on the legal prohibition of this type of testing. While previous scholarship has primarily addressed scientific and ethical critiques of genetic sex testing, the fact that such testing has also been legally prohibited, most notably through Norway’s Biotechnology Act but also through other national and international legal instruments in Europe, is missing from existing analyses. Scientific, ethical, and legal objections converged during the late twentieth century to discredit genetic sex testing, and these objections culminated in formally banning the practice. World Athletics’ 2025 decision to re-introduce genetic sex testing must be situated within this longer historical trajectory. The new policy risks colliding with well-established legal frameworks that were erected in response to historical injustices caused by genetic testing. By centring the legal dimension and the history of its emergence, this article advances existing scholarship by demonstrating that genetic sex testing has not been merely ethically fraught and scientifically flawed but was also rendered unlawful. This has major implications for the viability of World Athletics’ new policy, which have not so far been sufficiently acknowledged.