A court statement said the justices found the constitutional claims against the reform partly unfounded and partly inadmissible.
RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) – Italy’s Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a 2025 Law Limiting Citizenship by Descentrejecting constitutional challenges and leaving in place a reform that sharply narrowed the traditional the right of blood principle.
The decision came in a statement from the court after judges ruled on a constitutional challenge brought last year by a court in Turin, northern Italy. The local court argued that the law should not apply retroactively to descendants of Italians born before the change.
In its statement, the court said the constitutional issues raised in the case were “in part unfounded and in part inadmissible,” leaving the law in place.
The full decision, including the court’s detailed legal reasoning, has not yet been released and could take weeks to be issued, said Renata Bueno, an Italian-Brazilian lawyer and former member of the Italian parliament.
“Although this is not yet the full decision, it already makes clear that the court will not entertain constitutional challenges involving claims to citizenship beyond the third generation,” Bueno said. “The law stands as it was decreed in March 2025 and later approved by the Italian Parliament.”
Bueno said the legal battle could continue on other constitutional grounds beyond the argument examined in this case. That argument questioned whether the new law violated the principle of equality under Article 3 of the Italian Constitution by limiting the recognition of citizenship to descendants born abroad.
Fabio Gioppo, a lawyer specializing in Italian citizenship cases, said the statement provides the court’s first indication of specific arguments, which could influence how lower courts handle similar cases.
However, he noted that the court’s statement does not address every possible constitutional argument and that Italy’s constitutional review system operates on an ad hoc basis, meaning the Constitutional Court only considers specific questions presented by lower courts in concrete cases.
“While the statement is an important development in the legal debate, it does not end questions about the constitutional limits of the new law,” Gioppo said. “How the case will develop will depend on the publication of the full court decision and on the future decisions of the Italian courts.”
Gioppo also said the cases could eventually reach European courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, if litigants argue the reform violates international human rights treaties.
Bueno acknowledged that such challenges could reach European courts, but said they are unlikely to succeed because the issue falls largely within Italy’s national sovereignty.
The court’s statement quickly circulated among the Italians’ Brazilian descendants, closely following the legal battles over citizenship.
Brazil is home to the largest community of Italian descendants outside of Italy, estimated at around 30 million people. For decades, a broad interpretation of the right of blood the principle allowed Brazilians of Italian ancestry several generations ago to seek recognition of citizenship through administrative procedures or lawsuits.
On Facebook, members of the group “Cidadania Italiana Judicial” (Italian Citizenship through the Courts), which has about 22,000 members, discussed the court’s statement and warned that it is still too early to draw final conclusions before the full verdict is issued.
“As always, caution is the key word,” João Paulo Perim Zago wrote in a group post.
Zago noted that other related cases are still going through the Italian courts, including proceedings scheduled for hearings at the Constitutional Court on June 9, which some group members see as the next turning point in the legal debate over citizenship reform.
Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is in Brazil.
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