The Galician Sports Justice Committee has its first female president

An institution that delegates the law and order in the field of sports

On Thursday, 5 November, the official website of the Government of Galicia, informed about the appointment of the new Galician Sports Justice Committee (CGXD), the last renovation of its membership having been performed in 2016. This is the first time that the Committee will be headed by a woman, namely María Dolores Rodríguez, a lawyer from Vigo, with extensive experience in sports law, who had already served as a member of the same body for 8 years.

Sports Justice Committees provide administrative, rather than legal, justice

What is more, it is also the first time that the Committee will feature a majority female membership, with 3 out of the 5 members being women. This is important progress for a field which has traditionally skewed heavily to male representation, despite the equal participation of women in sports. It only makes sense that decision-making should be administered from a more proportionally representative body.

The new Committee team were welcomed and greeted by the Sports Secretary General José Ramón Lete Lasa. He praised the work of the previous administration, which managed to resolve more than 360 cases during the past four years.

Mr Lete Lasa also stated that during the new mandate the CGXD will have the task of promoting its arbitration section to push for the extrajudicial solutions of private conflicts in the sports sphere.

Although the Sports Justice Committee forms part of the General Secretariat for Sports system, it is an institution that is functionally independent of the latter. The Committee is the regional version of the Administrative Sports Tribunal, which has the same capacity on a national level.

Sports justice is not an area that is well developed yet in all countries, but it is quite essential given the eminence that sports have in our daily lives.

Among the competences of the CGXD are reviewing the disciplinary sanctions imposed by sports federations on clubs and athletes, ensuring the fairness and cleanliness of the tournaments, and watching over the electoral process of the regional sports federations.