A/HRC/62/55 the prohibition of racial discrimination. Eligibility regulations are developed and enforced by sports governance bodies operating at the different levels of local, national, regional and international competitive sports. As grass-roots and national teams tend to be pipelines for elite and international competitive sports, exclusion due to discriminatory regulations can have a powerful impact on the trajectories and careers of athletes. 16. The Special Rapporteur received several examples about the racially discriminatory impact of eligibility regulations. For example, in France, Muslim women, who often face systemic and intersectional discrimination due to race, ethnicity, gender and religion, are banned by some sports associations, such as those governing football and basketball, from wearing head coverings during sports activities. This creates a tension between women’s right to participate in sport and their rights to exercise religious freedom and freedom of expression. One submission received by the Special Rapporteur described playing sport without wearing head coverings as women being forced to give up a part of who they are. National-level bans also lead to the exclusion of Muslim women from international sports. The international federations governing basketball and football allow for the wearing of head coverings, but women who are excluded from sports because of French bans will usually not be able to access international sport owing to the relationships between local, national and international competitions. Moreover, there have been cases in which Muslim women have been forced to remove non-religious headwear, including protective equipment, based on their ethnic appearance, 23 demonstrating the ways in which head-covering bans can fuel Islamophobia, racial profiling and the surveillance and policing of Muslim women’s bodies and behaviours. 17. The Special Rapporteur also received information about the use by World Athletics of the rule on maximum allowable standing height. The aim of the rule is ostensibly to ensure fairness in competition by restricting the length of prosthetic limbs based on an athlete’s predicted maximum height. The rule reportedly employs a formula used to estimate the length an athlete’s lower legs would be if they were biologically intact and, consequently, the athlete’s estimated overall height. Athletes must comply with the maximum allowable standing height to be eligible for competition, which in practice often requires prosthetic adjustment. Athletes from certain racial or ethnic backgrounds may be disproportionately affected, as their natural variations in body proportions may result in inaccurate height predictions, thereby limiting their ability to compete equitably. Blake Leeper, a Black man who was born with incompletely formed legs and underwent below-the-knee amputations, challenged the rule, and his resulting ineligibility to compete in the Olympics, before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Mr. Leeper’s team argued that his maximum allowable standing height was calculated considering solely Spanish-Caucasian athletes and that there was independent research that demonstrated systemic racial bias against Black athletes in such calculations.24 18. World Athletics introduced the Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Athletes with Differences of Sex Development) in 2018. Prior to this, in 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the 2011 World Athletics rules that restricted the permissible amount of naturally occurring testosterone in women suspected of hyperandrogenism and that required the women concerned to undergo interventions to lower their testosterone to specified levels to compete. The 2011 rules were criticized for their discriminatory impact and the continued use of a single biological marker for determining eligibility to compete in the women’s category, and questions were raised about the robustness of the scientific evidence supporting the underlying claim that higher natural testosterone provides some women with a competitive advantage over other women. The 2011 rules were successfully challenged before the Court of Arbitration for Sport by Indian track-and-field athlete Dutee Chand. The arbitration included expert testimony about the disproportionate impact of the 2011 rules on low-income women from the global South. The 2018 rules impose testosterone thresholds and mandatory medical suppression on athletes with some forms of variations in sex characteristics. The application of the rules to a more limited number of athletes does not 23 24 6 Submission from Les Hijabeuses, and FRA 13/2023 (available at https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=28534). Submission from Sports Rights Watch and International Human Rights Center, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. GE.26-07112