Order of the Court of Reggio Emilia of 9 February 2013

With this order, the Court of Reggio Emilia annulled the refusal of a residence permit for family reasons to a transsexual person based on the assumption that his condition made it impossible the continuation of marriage. Remembering the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the fact that the meaning of “family life” under Article 8 of the ECHR also includes the continuation of marriage in the case that one of the spouses has changed sex, the Court of Reggio Emilia observed that, a fortiori, the fact that one of the spouses was a transsexual persons did not exclude, per se, the existence and continuation of marriage.