Decision of the Court of Cassation No. 12692 of 22 June 2016

With this judgment, the Court of Cassation confirmed that the adoption of a child by a woman who contracted a same-sex marriage with the child’s mother in Spain is allowed in Italy’s legal order – in the lacking of special provisions – under Article 44 of law No. 184 of 1983. This Article concerns children right to a family and governs adoption under certain particular circumstances. For the Court, this interpretation of Article 44 from the courts on the merits was correct, and in line with the Constitutional Court’s and the ECHR Court’s jurisprudence concerning the ‘best interest of the child’ (New York Convention on the Rights of the Child) and the principle of non-discrimination against same-sex couples (Article 14 of the ECHR).