CAS panel upheld WADA's appeal against a 12-month sanction for three whereabouts failures, holding that Article 10.6 requires a failure-specific causal nexus and that general personal hardship is insufficient to reduce below the mandatory minimum two-year period of ineligibility.
Panel accepted a contaminated supplement defence under Article 10.5, reducing a four-year sanction to twelve months after detailed expert toxicology evidence established the source of the prohibited substance was a commercially available supplement not listed as containing the relevant compound.
Panel rejected the argument that a general proportionality override could be used to circumvent the mandatory minimum framework under the 2021 Code. Confirmed that proportionality operates through the specific reduction mechanisms in Articles 10.5 and 10.6, not as a freestanding general principle.
Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice held that UEFA and FIFA's rules preventing clubs from participating in unauthorised competitions — and threatening sanctions against players who did so — were prima facie restrictions on competition and free movement, lawful only if subject to a transparent, objective, non-discriminatory authorisation procedure.
Full Court held that the UEFA transfer fee system for out-of-contract players and the "3+2" nationality quota rules are incompatible with Article 48 of the EEC Treaty on free movement of workers. The most consequential sports law judgment ever delivered — reshaped the global football transfer market immediately.
Panel overturned a TUE revocation on the basis that the relevant federation failed to follow its own published procedure for medical review, illustrating the procedural protections available to athletes even within the narrow TUE framework.
The Court of Justice reversed the Court of First Instance and held that there is no blanket "purely sporting" exemption from EU competition law. Anti-doping rules must be assessed in their economic context and may only be justified where they pursue a legitimate objective proportionately. The foundational case for applying competition law to sports governance.
The state-sponsored doping case that defined the standard of CAS de novo review in compliance-related appeals, confirmed the scope of WADA's appellate standing, and established the framework for imposing consequences on national federations found to have facilitated systematic doping.