Introduction:
The case concerned a U.S.-born applicant seeking recognition of Italian citizenship through an Italian-born female ancestor who emigrated to the United States. The applicant produced civil-status documentation establishing direct descent from the Italian ancestor, together with a negative naturalization certificate supporting the absence of any voluntary loss of Italian citizenship. The Ministry of the Interior did not appear in the proceedings and was therefore declared in default. Importantly, the petition had been filed on January 20, 2025, before the changes introduced by Decree-Law No. 36/2025, and the Court expressly confirmed that the previous legal framework applied ratione temporis.
Outcome:
The Court granted the petition and declared the applicant entitled to recognition of Italian citizenship. It ordered the Ministry of the Interior and the competent Civil Status Registrar to complete all registrations, transcriptions and annotations required by law and directed the Court Registry to transmit the judgment without delay to the competent Civil Status Registrar. The costs of the proceedings were declared non-recoverable.
Challenge:
The Court identified two essential requirements for recognition: direct descent from an Italian citizen and uninterrupted continuity in the transmission of citizenship. On the first requirement, the civil-status documentation established the complete genealogical connection with the Italian-born ancestor. On the second, the Court found no event capable of interrupting the citizenship chain. In particular, the ancestor’s first descendant had acquired foreign citizenship automatically by birth abroad under jus soli rather than through a voluntary naturalization process. The case also involved the historical restrictions affecting maternal transmission before 1 January 1948. The Court recalled Constitutional Court Judgments No. 87/1975 and No. 30/1983, which eliminated the discriminatory rules concerning the loss and transmission of citizenship by Italian women, as well as the subsequent Supreme Court case law extending those principles to pre-1948 maternal lines.
Action:
After examining the evidence, the Court held that the applicant had satisfied the burden of proving both the Italian origin of the family line and its continuity. The negative naturalization certificate supported the absence of voluntary renunciation by the Italian ancestor, while no evidence showed that subsequent ascendants had renounced Italian citizenship. The Court emphasized that an applicant seeking recognition of citizenship must prove the original acquisition of citizenship and the chain of transmission. Once those elements are established, the burden of demonstrating an event capable of interrupting that chain falls on the opposing party. Applying the constitutional principles governing maternal transmission, the Court further concluded that neither the ancestor’s marriage to a foreign citizen nor the fact that the relevant transmission occurred before 1948 could defeat the applicant’s citizenship claim.
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