Introduction:
The case concerned descendants seeking recognition of Italian citizenship through an Italian-born female ancestor who emigrated to the United States. Although her husband had become naturalized and had renounced Italian citizenship, the applicants based their claim on the female ancestor, maintaining that she had never voluntarily renounced her own Italian citizenship. The documentation showed that she had acquired U.S. citizenship through marriage without making any declaration of renunciation of Italian citizenship. The Ministry of the Interior did not appear in the proceedings. Because the petition had been filed in 2024, the Court expressly applied the legal framework in force before Decree-Law No. 36/2025.
Outcome:
The Court granted the petition and declared the applicants Italian citizens from birth. It ordered the Ministry of the Interior and the competent Civil Status Registrar to complete all registrations, transcriptions and annotations required by law and to make the necessary communications to the competent consular authorities. No order as to costs was made.
Challenge:
The decisive issue was whether the Italian-born female ancestor had retained the citizenship necessary to transmit it to her descendants, despite her marriage to a man who subsequently naturalized abroad and renounced Italian citizenship. The Court recalled the constitutional case law that eliminated the historical discrimination affecting Italian women. In particular, it referred to Constitutional Court Judgment No. 87/1975, which declared unconstitutional the rule providing for the loss of Italian citizenship by a woman merely because she married a foreign citizen, regardless of her own will. It also recalled Constitutional Court Judgment No. 30/1983 and the Supreme Court's Joint Sections Judgment No. 4466/2009 concerning the transmission of citizenship through women in pre-1948 cases. According to the Court, citizenship is a permanent and imprescriptible status, and the discriminatory effects of the former legislation cannot continue where the person concerned never expressly renounced Italian citizenship.
Action:
After examining the civil-status documentation, the Court concluded that the female ancestor had never lost Italian citizenship through an express act of renunciation and had therefore validly transmitted citizenship to the next generation. Her husband’s separate renunciation did not alter her own citizenship status or prevent transmission through her maternal line. The Court further applied Article 7 of Law No. 555/1912, confirming that descendants born abroad and regarded as citizens of another country by jus soli could nevertheless retain the Italian citizenship acquired jure sanguinis, unless they expressly renounced it. Since no such renunciation emerged from the documentation, the citizenship chain remained intact.
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