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Italy's top court to rule on gay adoption

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Italy's top court to rule on gay adoption
The couple married in the US last year and both gave birth through fertility treatment. Adoption photo: Shutterstock"

Italy's Constitutional Court will make a landmark ruling on gay adoption, prompted by the case of an American-Italian lesbian couple and their two children.

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Bologna’s juvenile court has requested the Constitutional Court decide on the case of two women who want to have their children’s adoption recognized in Italy.

The couple married in the US last year and both gave birth through fertility treatment, gaining adoption rights over each others’ child.

They have since moved to Italy and the Italian mother is fighting to get her adoption of her wife’s daughter recognized, despite gay adoption being illegal in the country.

The Italian’s son was granted Italian citizenship through his mother, but the American woman’s child currently only has the same rights as her foreign biological mother.

Rather than rule on the case, the Bologna court decided on Tuesday to pass the couple’s fate to the Constitutional Court.

The view that families need to have parents of opposite sex, as laid down in Italy’s constitution, “is no longer agreeable in light of the social change,” the Bologna court said.

“Marriages celebrated abroad by people of the same sex can no longer be considered against public order.

“Same sex marriage is not non-existent, but it is idle to judicial effects in Italy for the lack of a specific law,” the court said, quoted in AGI.

The Bologna court has therefore called on the Rome court to “solve the question of the constitutional legitimacy” of part of Italy’s 1983 law on international adoption.

The juvenile court’s decision was praised by the couple’s lawyer, Claudio Pezzi. “The court has demonstrated once again that it pays very close attention and examines every single case,” he was quoted as saying.

Moving the case to the Constitutional Court paves the way for a revision of Italian law, rather than deciding on one case, Pezzi said.  

READ MORE: US-Italian gay couple in adoption court battle

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