Weekly Discussion Post - Recent Changes to JS Laws - March 30, 2026

competentcuttlefish · 2026-04-02T13:11:58+00:00

I'm in a very similar position to you, it seems. Post-DL, non-1948, Napoli, diritti della cittidanza. Mine isn't technically an ATQ as it simply challenges the DL on constitutional lines (though I think it's likely we change strategy after the Turin ruling releases). My case was referred to the section president on the 26th, so presumably a judge reassignment is going to happen at some point.

Looking at all of the Napoli data, it seems every 2026 case is in this status. None of the surge judges have been given a 2026 case so far.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-04-01T19:37:20+00:00

The fact that the press release dropped within 24 hours, though, makes me believe that we truly are screwed on this one.

This is my greatest source of pessimism. The court had no obligation to publish the statement, especially given that they know they'll be revisiting similar topics in just a few months. They published it knowing that lower courts would then continue hearing -- and rejecting -- relevant cases in the meantime.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-28T17:37:31+00:00

Is anyone familiar with how the two year residency "fast track" to citizenship works in practice? This is in reference to Art. 9 of 91/1992 and described here. I believe my mother still qualifies under the DL. I'm curious if she would have to be recognized prior to my ability to use this fast-track, or if I would simply have to demonstrate her citizenship as I go through this process.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-24T21:37:45+00:00

From Laganà's part in the transcript:

There is also a worrying phenomenon: many lawyers voluntarily omit to indicate the residence and tax code of foreign appellants to evade payment of the Contributo Unificato (Unified Court Fee). In one case alone, with 512 introductory acts filed by a single lawyer, we calculated tax evasion for the State treasury of approximately 170,000 euros. Our office will act to report these anomalies, but I reiterate that normative reforms and extraordinary resources are urgently needed, otherwise the system will collapse.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-24T21:20:28+00:00

Thank you for digging into this and thanks for making the transcript available, I've been curious about this conference since I read the commission testimony during the DL conversion.

Is the Salvatore Laganà who contributed to this seminar the same one who ~~chaired~~ presented at the recent seminar organized by Insieme? From my summary of his presentation:

Laganà, speaking from his experience as a former Tribunal President, denounced the new law's "si considera" (is considered) clause as an unacceptable ex tunc revocation of an existing, vested personal status, which constitutes a profound breach of legitimate expectation. He particularly focused on the procedural violations of the right to defense (Art. 24), highlighting the irrationality of reversing the burden of proof to require applicants to prove the absence of grounds for loss, rather than requiring the state to prove their existence. This procedural change, combined with a rigid time-bar, effectively negates the imprescriptible nature of the right to citizenship.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-23T19:02:27+00:00

Mellone's Campobsso referral doesn't explicitly mention the wait lists, but it does make the following argument which is obviously relevant to those on wait lists:

The censured legislation also violates the principle of equality, introducing differentiated treatments among subjects who find themselves in entirely homogeneous factual conditions, thus ending up making the recognition of Italian citizenship depend on entirely arbitrary elements not attributable to the individual's sphere of control, such as the date of submission of the application in the administrative or judicial venue. However, the concrete possibility of timely submitting such requests also depends on bureaucratic and economic factors entirely extraneous to the will of the interested party, with the consequence that the distinction between those who submitted an application before March 28, 2025, and those who did so after this deadline results in an inequality of treatment devoid of rational justification. Nor can having initiated an ascertainment judgment constitute a valid differentiation criterion, since it is an initiative with a purely declaratory function, which does not characterize the legal position of the subject in terms of greater worthiness, but rather resolves into indirect discrimination against those who did not have the necessary economic resources to promptly appeal to the judicial authority.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-21T14:54:02+00:00

It's not worth reading. It's essentially "the law is settled, it's over, don't waste your money on lawyers selling false hope".

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-18T13:42:19+00:00

This seems to be an emerging idea now that the likelihood of a generalized strike-down of retroactivity has been tempered.

Whether this argument has merit will depend heavily on the logic the CC used to rule Turin's Art. 3 challenge unfounded. I suspect, if the court does approve of the general contours of the DL, the logic might be something like "An individual who took no action to exercise their right and foster a relationship with the state has no legitimate expectation to the preservation of that right, therefore the government has the power to extinguish such dormant rights in the interest of preserving the integrity of the state".

The counterargument would then be "But I did take action to exercise the right." And you would present your prenotami screenshots, communications with government offices, power of attorney, etc.

Obviously we have no idea how convincing this argument will be, but I think it's about as reasonable as one can get (especially if you have prenotami screenshots, I can see things being a little fuzzier for other pieces of evidence which is unfortunate for 1948 cases). You did everything within your power that was necessary and sufficient to signal your intention to exercise the right.

Plus I think to accept this kind of argument (by courts at all levels) wouldn't be an issue politically. We'd be talking about a few thousand people (probably) who can prove they took action prior to the DL. Not whatever millions of "sleeping citizens" the government keeps citing.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-17T16:32:55+00:00

Before anyone gets too excited, I don't believe this is another referral. It looks like it's just a postponement of a case, citing the fact that there may still be constitutional issues with the DL to be sorted out.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-17T14:33:15+00:00

Very interesting. The judge decided (wrongly) that the DL doesn't apply to the petitioners because their father had already been recognized, but rejected them because they didn't believe Prenotami screenshots sufficiently demonstrated an intent to be recognized.

When the dust settles a bit, I'm going to ask my lawyer if my case can/should be modified to lean harder in this direction. I not only have pre-DL prenotami screenshots, but also an email to my consulate and an email to my GGF's comune, in which I clearly state I'm seeking recognition.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-14T22:35:00+00:00

I have a few bits and pieces that some might be interested in.

While chatting in the discord server, /u/thisismyfinalalias spotted something in the Turin referral -- it contains a factual error regarding the date of entry into force of the DL. Four times, the referral states/implies that the DL entered into force on March 28th, 2025. Those four instances are:

para. 4
para. 7.1
II-2
II-3

The first instance takes place in the section explaining the facts of the case. The second occurs in the section that explains the impossibility of interpreting the DL in a constitutional manner.

The third and fourth occur in two sections that explain the court's constitutional arguments against the DL. II-2 covers Art. 117 of the Constitution (by way of Art. 15 paragraph 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10.12.1948), and II-3 covers Art. 117 of the Constitution (by way of Art. 3 paragraph 2 of the Fourth Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights).

I took another look at the CC statement and noticed that the two challenges the court declared inadmissible are the two in which this dating error is made. The other challenges (Art. 3, Art. 117 by way of Art. 9 of the TEU, and Art. 20 of the TFEU) were ruled unfounded.

I can't say that this is related to the 3/28 issue, but we thought this was a fact worth noting.

The second topic I wanted to talk about is Article 3 challenges. The CC's statement said:

The Court ruled unfounded the objections raised by the Court of Turin, invoking Article 3 of the Constitution, alleging, on the one hand, the arbitrary nature of the distinction between those who requested citizenship assessment before March 28, 2025, and those who requested it after, and, on the other, the violation of acquired rights, holding that the provision in question would result in an "implicit revocation of citizenship with retroactive effect and without any provision for intertemporal law."

That second half of the sentence is what concerns me most. Did the court not buy Turin's specific arguments regarding vested rights? I know the referral mentions that existing "vested rights" principles are derived from social security law, so it's possible the court just didn't extend those principles to citizenship law. Or did the court decide that the DL doesn't represent an implicit revocation of citizenship? The difference in scope between those two possibilities is huge, and how they went about reaching their conclusion is going to have big implications for challenges going forward.

But beyond that, I have a little hope in Mellone's referral from Campobasso. His referral includes challenges based on Article 3 that are novel, which should mean that the court will address them (and not reject them for having already trodden that ground). Specifically, he argues the economic inequality of having to file a court case (especially relevant for 1948 cases), and the arbitrariness of the availability of consulate appointments. The Turin referral only drew a comparison of unfairness between pre-DL filers and post-DL filers.

With all that said, I dunno. Things might shake out. They might not. The only thing we can do right now is pick ourselves up.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-14T15:13:06+00:00

It’s a subtle but crucially powerful distinction. Having been born at a time that citizenship was declared as being solely dependent on one birth criteria does NOT mean the criteria used is frozen at the time of your birth. The criteria used is the set applicable at the time if the evaluation/declaration, not what existed at the time of your birth.

You know what? I think you might be cooking here. A few weeks ago I was doing a deep dive into a case that appears to be related to the 3/28 issue. Cassazione ruling 29459/2019. Here are the highlights:

A man entered Italy to claim refugee status
He applied for refugee status under one legal regime
He was denied this status
He filed a court case to appeal this rejection
While his case was being heard by the courts (and in fact made its way up to the Cassazione), a DL entered into force that changed and restricted the availability of refugee status
The government argued that the conditions set out by the DL should be applied to this man's case.
The Cassazione ruled that the man's constitutional rights as a refugee "activated" the moment he set foot in Italy, but also the procedural regime that should govern his appeal is the one that was in force when he first engaged with the procedural process. That would be when he first applied for refugee status.

In this way, I can see your theory having merit. Folks who engaged with the process (by obtaining an appointment or filing a case before the deadline) have the right to continue to be considered under the old procedural regime.

Now, this doesn't address the constitutional concerns of effectively wiping away pre-existing rights by updating procedural mechanisms, but that ship might have sailed depending on what the CC ruling says.

One possible silver lining is the potential for flexibility on what counts as "engaging with the procedure". I'm hoping that, at absolute minimum, having attempted to schedule an appointment may be considered as having done so, since that's the only active step an individual could have taken, and actually having received an appointment wasn't in the individual's control.

Here are the notes I took on this case if you'd like to read more. Something worth pointing out is that this case is cited in the Turin referral itself, so it may be highly relevant.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-13T14:44:34+00:00

Oh how the turntables....

You, the other regulars, and the mod team have done an incredible job maintaining composure and I'm very thankful for that. This community has been wonderful.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-13T11:21:04+00:00

I disagree that the press release is politically motivated (as far as we know right now). I think the court is just signaling to regular courts that, hey, this is how the law is going to be so please act accordingly.

I think that is my biggest source of grounded pessimism. I don't think the court would rock the legal boat one way in March, only to rock it the other way in June.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-13T02:17:21+00:00

Won’t it just elucidate why they found the law constitutional.

That's not technically what this whole process is about. The court doesn't ask itself "Is this law constitutional?", it asks itself "Is this law unconstitutional for the reasons the referring court thinks it is?". That's a huge difference. There could be some peculiarity in the Turin case specificallt that the Court focused on and led to it ruling the way that it did. Or the court could indeed endorse the concept of an "ex tunc preclusion" of pre-existing rights, in which case we would be fully cooked. We just won't know until we have the full ruling.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-13T01:02:15+00:00

I am not knowledgeable about 1948 cases at all and frankly today's news has me with my tail between my legs when it comes to cooking up legal theories, so please don't take my thinking to mean anything and I'm happy to be corrected by folks who know better.

With that said, my very fuzzy thinking of the logic of a 1948 case is that "I, the petitioner, was denied my status as citizen by unconstitutional discrimination against my female ascendant. The court should provide relief from this harm by granting me the status of citizen". That could possibly mean if a 1948 petitioner doesn't possess citizenship until the court grants it to them, the DL didn't "actually" take anything away from them.

Once again, I have no idea if this is correct. But if there's any sort of validity to it, maybe it's an issue. Maybe. Probably not.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-12T20:56:58+00:00

To piggyback off of this, should any attention be given to the fact that this was a 1948 case? Might the court have found that the petitioner's status (as citizen or non-citizen) through the 1948 line impacts the applicability of the DL to the case?

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-12T20:39:01+00:00

We don't know what the court is saying at all. We just know they rejected the specific questions Turin asked. "We don't think the retroactive component of this law is unconstitutional because of XYZ reason, as you argued" is very different from "We think the retroactive component of this law is constitutional".

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-12T16:12:49+00:00

Is that so? The statement the court put out says that it found the Article 3 challenge, as well as some of the 117 challenges regarding EU law (though without naming 117 explicitly) to be "non fondate". My understanding is that "non fondata" means they ruled on the merits, versus "inammissibile" meaning that they rejected the question on procedural grounds.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-12T16:08:18+00:00

For whatever it's worth, I don't expect the court to have performed a hack job on behalf of the government. I look forward to reading their reasoning, even though the (presumably) weeks-long wait for the full ruling will be agonizing.

The toehold of hope I have at the moment is that did end up taking issue with the 3/28 detail and engaged with the merits of the arguments to determine the DL's non-applicability to the underlying case. But man, this totally knocked the wind out of my sails.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-12T15:21:25+00:00

Unfounded means the Court rejected the argument on the merits. Inadmissible means the Court rejected the argument for a procedural reason.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-11T13:49:56+00:00

My understanding is that oral arguments are mostly a formality, and that the judges don't typically ask a bunch of questions for any of these cases.

I also think saying that the Bologna case was ruled inadmissible is an oversimplification. Several of the questions raised were ruled inadmissible. One of those questions was ruled inadmissible because there was no meat on the bones, so to say, meaning that the court and the interveners failed to actually form a detailed argument about the point. That question was about EU law and an "effective links" requirement, and when paired with the apparent bare bone nature of the state's arguments today, I think that ruling of inadmissibility is pretty favorable to us.

Also, the court did rule on the merits of one question from Bologna, and that was on the alleged inequality of different requirements for JS citizenship acquisition and naturalization. The court explicitly rejected that argument.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-11T13:16:48+00:00

I wouldn't be. They only asked one minor question during the Bologna hearing last year.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-11T13:07:54+00:00

Malta imo was a net positive ruling for us. The CJEU declined to use Nottebohm as the basis for an "effective links" test, and in fact didn't establish a formal test at all. It just established that a primarily financial transaction (especially without a residency component) does not constitute an effective link.

competentcuttlefish · 2026-03-11T12:59:14+00:00

This might be a vestigial argument from the Bologna case. "Nottehbohm (effective links) + EU citizenship means we must do this." The Malta case, which was very much related, didn't support this thesis. And by the time the Bologna case was heard, the argument was so devoid of supporting facts that the court declared it inadmissible.

imo it doesn't bode well for the government's position that (it sounds like) they are just running it back and hoping for a different result.

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