Italy’s Constitutional Court rejects challenge to citizenship-by-descent reform

RIO DE JANEIRO (CN) — Italy’s Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a 2025 law restricting citizenship by descent, rejecting constitutional challenges and leaving in place a reform that sharply narrowed the traditional jus sanguinis principle.

The decision came in a statement from the court after judges ruled on a constitutional challenge filed last year by a court in Turin, northern Italy. The local court argued the law should not apply retroactively to descendants of Italians born before the change.

In its statement, the court said the constitutional questions raised in the case were “partly unfounded and partly inadmissible,” leaving the law in place.

The full ruling, including the court’s detailed legal reasoning, has not yet been published and could take weeks to be issued, said Renata Bueno, an Italo-Brazilian lawyer and former member of the Italian Parliament.

“Although this is not the full ruling yet, it already makes clear that the court will not accept constitutional challenges involving citizenship claims 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 debate may continue on other constitutional grounds beyond the argument examined in this case. That argument questioned whether the new law violated the equality principle under Article 3 of the Italian Constitution by restricting citizenship recognition for descendants born abroad.

Fabio Gioppo, a lawyer specializing in Italian citizenship cases, said the statement offers the court’s first indication on specific arguments, which could influence how lower courts handle similar cases.

Still, he noted the court’s statement does not address every possible constitutional argument and that Italy’s constitutional review system operates on an incidental basis, meaning the Constitutional Court examines only the specific questions submitted 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 issue unfolds will depend on the publication of the court’s full ruling and on future decisions by Italian courts.”

Gioppo also said 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 such challenges could reach European courts but said they are unlikely to succeed because the issue largely falls within Italy’s national sovereignty.

The court’s statement quickly circulated among Brazilian descendants of Italians closely following the legal battles over citizenship.

Brazil is home to the largest community of Italian descendants outside Italy, estimated at roughly 30 million people. For decades, a broad interpretation of the jus sanguinis principle allowed Brazilians with Italian ancestors several generations back 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 nearly 22,000 members, discussed the court’s statement and cautioned that it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions before the full ruling is released.

“As always, caution is the key word,” wrote João Paulo Perim Zago in a post to the group.

Zago noted that other related cases are still moving through Italian courts, including proceedings scheduled for hearings at the Constitutional Court on June 9, which some members of the group see as the next decisive moment in the legal debate over the citizenship reform.

Courthouse News reporter Marília Marasciulo is based in Brazil.