Anti-doping, purported rights to privacy and WADA’s whereabouts requirements: A legal analysis

Recent discussions among lawyers, philosophers, policy researchers and athletes have focused on thepotential threat to privacy posed by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) whereaboutsrequirements. These requirements demand, among other things, that all elite athletes file theirwhereabouts information for the subsequent quarter on a quarterly basis and comprise data for onehour of each day when the athlete will be available and accessible for no advance notice testing at aspecified location of their choosing. Failure to file one’s whereabouts, or the non-availability fortesting at said location on three occasions within any 18-month period constitutes an anti-doping ruleviolation that is equivalent to testing positive to a banned substance, and may lead to a suspension ofthe athlete for a time period of between one and two years. We critically explore the extent to whichWADA’s whereabouts requirements are in tension with existing legislation on privacy, with respect toUK athletes, who are simultaneously protected by UK domestic and EU law. Both UK domestic andEU law are subject to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, whichestablishes a right to “respect for private and family life, home and correspondence”. We criticallydiscuss the centrality of the whereabouts requirements in relation to WADA’s aims, and the adoptionand implementation of its whereabouts rules. We conclude that as WADA’s whereabouts requirementsappear to be in breach of an elite athlete’s rights under European workers’ rights, health & safety anddata protection law they are also, therefore, in conflict with Article 8 of the ECHR and the UK HumanRights Act 1998. We call for specific amendments that cater for the exceptional case of elite sportslabour if the WADA requirements are to be considered legitimate