December 11 – The elite group of players campaigning against the use of artificial turf at next year’s Women’s World Cup in Canada appear to have won a partial victory after the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario cleared the way for them to amend their case to include allegations of reprisal threats against some of them.
The court noted that such allegations “strike at the integrity of the Tribunal’s process for enforcing human rights in Ontario.”
However, tribunal vice chairwoman Jo-Anne Pickel rejected the players’ request for a so-called cease and desist order.
“The application has been amended to include the applicants’ reprisal allegations,” Pickel wrote. “The Tribunal will hear evidence in support of these allegations in due course. Given that no evidence has yet been heard in this case, the Tribunal is not in a position to determine whether the respondents have engaged in any reprisals contrary to the [Human Rights] Code.”
The Canada Soccer Association and FIFA now have 21 days to respond to the amended suit.
The players allege that Mexican international Teresa Noyola and French internationals Camille Abily and Elise Bussaglia had been threatened if they carried on with the lawsuit. Noyola, according to an earlier legal filing, was told she would not be invited to play for the Mexican team unless she withdrew her name from the case.
Abily and Bussaglia “were led to believe that their continued participation in this action would lead to retaliation by FIFA in the awarding of the 2019 Women’s World Cup,” according to the file.
France is seeking to host the 2019 event.
Interestingly, all three have withdrawn from the complaint but Abily denied she had been pressured to do so, saying on her club website that it was a “personal decision”.
The protesters also allege that Costa Rican internationals Diana Saenz and Katherine Alvarado, along with a third unnamed player, were told by Costa Rican Federation officials “that their participation put their positions on the team in jeopardy as a result of pressure from CSA and FIFA.”
The Canadian Soccer Association rejected the allegations while FIFA argued that it had not been properly served with the legal complaint. Pickel dismissed that claim in an earlier judgement on Monday.
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