Italy's constitutional court rules in favor of same-sex moms

ROME (AFP) — Italy’s highest court ruled on Thursday it was unconstitutional not to legally recognize non-biological mothers on the birth certificates of children born to same-sex couples through IVF.

The finding was hailed “historic” by opposition parties in Italy, which is governed by self-declared “Christian mother” Giorgia Meloni.

The far-right leader has railed against the “LGBT lobby” and says she defends traditional family values in the Catholic majority country.

The Constitutional Court in Rome “ruled as discriminatory the failure to recognize both mothers,” a decision which “effectively becomes law,” lawyer Michele Giarratano told AFP.

Civil unions became legal in Italy in 2016 but the law on parental rights for same-sex couples has been unclear.

Encouraged by several court rulings, local mayors have in recent years been registering both biological and non-biological parents on birth certificates.

But in 2023, Meloni’s interior minister ordered town halls to stop transcribing certificates of children born abroad through surrogacy.

In response, prosecutors across Italy began contesting birth certificates of children born abroad or in Italy to same-sex parents — whether through surrogacy or not.

Non-biological mothers risked losing access to their children if their partner died or the relationship broke down, as well as suffering day-to-day stresses such as not being able to take their child to a doctor without the other parent’s permission.

The Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that refusing to recognize women who assume parental responsibility for the child their partner carries “does not guarantee the best interests of the minor” and violates several articles in the constitution.

That included the child’s right to a continuous relationship with each parent and with relatives from each parent’s branch of the family, it said.

“This is a historic decision,” said Giarratano from Padua in northeastern Italy.

He represents 15 children in Padua, where a zealous prosecutors’ instruction to retroactively remove non-biological mothers from birth certificates turned the city into a symbol of the fight for same-sex parents’ rights.

Elly Schlein, head of the biggest opposition party, the center-left Democratic Party, said the “historic” ruling was “a heavy political defeat” for a hard-right coalition government which has “used rainbow families as a political target.”

Activists have warned of an erosion of civil rights since Meloni took office in 2022, including the extension last year of the country’s ban on surrogacy to couples who seek it abroad.

On Thursday, a court in Pesaro in northern Italy ruled in favor of the adoption of a child by his non-biological father, despite the child being conceived abroad via surrogacy.

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By Agence France-Presse