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Background. The growing number of labor disputes in professional sport, combined with the historically developed autonomy of sports, highlights the problem of the relationship between internal dispute resolution mechanisms and state judicial jurisdiction. This trend is driven by the widespread inclusion in individual employment contracts of professional athletes and/or in regulatory documents of sports governing bodies of clauses requiring parties to refrain from bringing disputes before courts of general jurisdiction and to submit them instead to internal bodies or international sports arbitration. Such practice may create a risk of disproportionate restriction of the right to judicial protection of labor rights. The purpose of the article is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the admissibility of such restrictions in the national legal system. Methods. The study is based on a comprehensive combination of general scientific and special legal methods. In particular, the formal legal method was used to analyze the norms of national legislation and and sports regulations; the systematic approach was used to study the relationship between the principle of sports autonomy and constitutional guarantees of the right to judicial protection; and the comparative legal method was used to compare the practice of resolving labor disputes of professional athletes in national courts and international jurisdiction, in particular the practice of the European Court of Human Rights. Results. The study finds that mandatory referral clauses requiring disputes to be resolved exclusively within internal sports bodies or international sports arbitration effectively create a closed dispute-resolution system within sports autonomy. Such clauses may be interpreted either as a negative obligation to waive the right to judicial protection or as an arbitration agreement defining the forum for dispute resolution. It has been proven that both interpretations are problematic in terms of compliance with national legislation. The paper substantiates the need to distinguish between regulatory/disciplinary disputes, for which a special resolution procedure may be established, and disputes concerning fundamental rights (in particular the right to work), where exclusion of state court jurisdiction is not permissible. Conclusions. Recourse to sports dispute-resolution bodies should be treated as a special voluntary (optional) form of labor-rights protection for professional athletes and should not exclude access to state courts. For minor professional athletes, ensuring the right to judicial protection in labor disputes should be an imperative guarantee, given their incomplete legal capacity and vulnerable legal position.
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