Introduction:
In this case, the Court of Turin examined an application filed by foreign descendants seeking recognition of Italian citizenship through an Italian-born female ancestor who emigrated to the United States. The applicants reconstructed their genealogical line through official civil-status records and demonstrated that the Italian ancestor never became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Ministry of the Interior did not appear in the proceedings, while the Public Prosecutor raised no objections to the granting of the application.
Outcome:
The Court granted the application and declared the applicants entitled to Italian citizenship jure sanguinis. It ordered the competent authorities to carry out all registrations, transcriptions, and annotations required by law, including communications to the relevant consular authorities. Legal costs were fully offset between the parties.
Challenge:
The central issue concerned citizenship transmission through a female ancestor who had married a foreign citizen and whose child was born before the entry into force of the Italian Constitution. Under the legislation then in force, Italian women were subject to discriminatory rules that either prevented them from transmitting citizenship or caused the loss of citizenship upon marriage to a foreign national. The Court reviewed the Constitutional Court decisions that declared these provisions unconstitutional and the subsequent Supreme Court case law recognizing the rights of descendants whose citizenship claims derive from the maternal line. In particular, the Court recalled the landmark 2009 decision of the Joint Chambers of the Supreme Court, which confirmed that descendants may seek judicial recognition even where the relevant transmission occurred before 1 January 1948. The Court also emphasized that citizenship is a permanent and imprescriptible status that remains enforceable over time unless expressly renounced.
Action:
After reviewing the documentary evidence, the Court found that the applicants had proven both their descent from the Italian ancestor and the continuity of citizenship transmission throughout the family line. Particular significance was given to the fact that the Italian-born ancestor never acquired U.S. citizenship through naturalization, as demonstrated by the documentation submitted in the proceedings.
The Court concluded that the historical discriminatory provisions preventing women from transmitting citizenship could no longer produce legal effects and that the citizenship status originally belonging to the Italian ancestor must be deemed to have passed to her descendants. Since no interruption in the chain of transmission was established, the applicants were recognized as Italian citizens jure sanguinis.
For the privacy of our clients, all names are fictional, and any identifying details in the judgements have been obscured.