On October 24, 2025, the Court of Mantua issued an ordinance that could reshape the future of Italian citizenship by descent. The court formally challenged Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 (as modified by Law 74/2025) on constitutional grounds, referring the matter to Italy’s Constitutional Court. This Mantua Court challenge represents a pivotal moment in the ongoing legal battle over Italy’s controversial new citizenship law.
For thousands of people worldwide seeking Italian citizenship through their ancestors, this challenge offers hope. It questions whether the government’s restrictive new rules are constitutionally sound. It also asks if the new law should apply retroactively to people already born as Italian citizens.
In this post, we will explain to you (in simple English) what the Mantua challenge is all about. We also explain what it could potentially mean for your Italian dual citizenship application.
The Case Background
The Mantua Court challenge involves what should have been a straightforward scenario: a minor born in Brazil whose mother is an Italian citizen, as confirmed by court judgment. Under Italy’s longstanding citizenship laws, this child should have automatically acquired Italian citizenship at birth through the principle of jus sanguinis—citizenship by right of blood.
But then Law 74/2025 changed everything.
When the child’s mother asked for registration, the Civil Status Officer refused. The reason? The new law imposes new, strict, and retroactive conditions and deadlines that this particular child didn’t meet. The family appealed, and the Court of Mantua escalated the matter to Italy’s Constitutional Court with serious questions about whether the law itself is constitutional.
What Made the Court Suspicious
The Mantua court identified something troubling: the law, as written, appears to retroactively revoke citizenship from people who already held it. Under the previous rules, this child was an Italian citizen from birth. The new law doesn’t merely prevent future acquisitions; it essentially says that certain people “never acquired” citizenship at all—even if they were born before the law took effect and even if they met all the requirements under the old rules.
This distinction matters enormously in constitutional law. There is a big difference between saying “new rules apply to future births” and saying “people who were already citizens are now retroactively not citizens.” The court questioned whether the latter approach crosses constitutional lines.
The Constitutional Problems the Mantua Court Identified
The Court of Mantua raised six major constitutional concerns about Article 3-bis:
- Unfair treatment and breaking trust in legitimate expectations
- Turning a right into a privilege
- Blocking people from court
- Removing the right to vote
- Using the wrong legislative process
- Breaking international promises
The First Problem: Unfair Treatment and Breaking Trust
The Italian Constitution protects something called “legitimate expectation,” which means your right to rely on existing laws. When laws change fundamentally, people should be able to trust that major disruptions won’t happen without good reason.
The Mantua Court challenge asserts that the new law creates unfair treatment and breaks trust in your legitimate expectation to rely on existing laws.
Think about two people born before the law took effect who are in identical situations—same Italian parent, same foreign birthplace, everything the same. The Italian government would treat them differently based solely on when they filed their application. In other words, someone who filed on March 26, 2025, can be an Italian citizen, while someone who filed on March 28, 2025, might not be—even though both were born before the law and have identical family circumstances.
This arbitrary distinction based purely on a date violates the principle of equal treatment that the Italian Constitution guarantees.
The Second Problem: Turning a Right into a Privilege
The Italian Constitution recognizes certain rights as inviolable—meaning they cannot be taken away. Citizenship by descent is one of these fundamental rights.
The Mantua Court challenge noted that under the old rules, citizenship by descent was not a privilege you had to request. It was an automatic right that you received simply by being born to an Italian parent. You could request formal recognition at any time if you wanted to, but you were a citizen at birth automatically whether you ever requested formal recognition or not.
The new law changes this fundamentally. It turns citizenship from something automatic into something you have to request within a specific deadline and under specific conditions. If you miss the deadline, your right simply disappears! The court questioned whether the government has the power to make such a dramatic change to a fundamental right that the Constitution says is inviolable.
According to the court, transforming citizenship from an automatic right into a “benefit to be requested” changes its nature in a way that may violate constitutional protections.
The Third Problem: Blocking People from Court
The new law creates what lawyers call an “evidentiary preclusion,” which is a fancy way of saying it blocks people from going to court to prove rights they already have.
Imagine you were born before the law took effect and you already had Italian citizenship under the old rules. Now you want to get that citizenship formally recognized. The new law might prevent you from going to court to do this if you miss certain deadlines or don’t meet certain conditions.
The Mantua court found this deeply problematic. The Italian Constitution guarantees the right to access the courts to protect your legal rights. If you already have a right, you should be able to go to court to prove it. The law shouldn’t create arbitrary obstacles that prevent you from protecting yourself. By creating these barriers to court access, the new law violates the constitutional right to judicial protection.
The Fourth Problem: Removing the Right to Vote
Citizenship is the foundation of democracy because it’s what gives you the right to vote and participate in government. The Mantua court noted that if the government can retroactively take away citizenship, it can retroactively take away voting rights. This changes who can participate in Italian democracy and affects fundamental democratic principles that the Constitution protects.
When a law retroactively removes citizenship rights, it removes voting rights at the same time. This is such a serious consequence that it demands very careful constitutional scrutiny. The government can’t just casually change who gets to vote through a new law.
The Fifth Problem: Using the Wrong Legislative Process
The government didn’t pass the new citizenship rules through the normal Parliamentary process. Instead, it used a Decree-Law. This is an emergency measure the government can employ in situations of “extraordinary necessity and urgency.” Only true emergencies and crises that cannot wait for normal Parliamentary proceedings necessitate a Decree-Law.
The Mantua court found this troubling. Citizenship laws are fundamental matters that define a nation. They affect who the people of Italy are. It is Parliament’s job to carefully debate such important reforms, and the government cannot impose sweeping changes through improper use of emergency powers.
The government argued that it needed to use an emergency decree because citizenship applications were overwhelming the consular system. But the court responded: the government has known about this problem for years (if not decades). It’s not a sudden emergency or crisis. There’s no extraordinary urgency. Emergency decrees should not rush major reforms affecting fundamental rights. They deserve full parliamentary debate where different viewpoints can be heard and considered.
The Sixth Problem: Breaking International Promises
Finally, the Mantua court noted that retroactive restrictions on citizenship may violate Italy’s international commitments. Italy has promised to follow the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects people against arbitrary discrimination. Italy has also promised to follow the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees equality before the law. Additionally, as a member of the European Union, Italy must follow EU law, which protects the principle of proportionality—meaning punishments and restrictions must be reasonable and not go too far.
By retroactively denying citizenship in ways that appear arbitrary and discriminatory, the court argued, Italy may be breaking these international promises. A country can’t just ignore the commitments it made to other nations and international organizations.
What Makes This Challenge Strong
The Mantua court’s challenge is particularly powerful because it builds on recent precedent.
On July 31st, 2025, the Constitutional Court issued Judgment No. 142/2025, which established important principles about citizenship rights. More recently, the Court of Turin (in June 2025) also referred constitutional questions about Law 74/2025 to the Constitutional Court.
The Mantua ordinance strengthens this legal push by adding the weight of detailed constitutional analysis. Multiple courts are now questioning the law from different angles, creating a compelling case that something is fundamentally wrong.
The Proposed Solution: Strike Down Retroactivity
Both the Mantua and Turin courts suggested a practical solution: strike down the retroactive portions of the law while preserving it for the future. For people born before March 27, 2025, when the law took effect, the old rules would apply. In essence, you would be grandfathered in. Said differently: if you were an Italian citizen under the previous law, you would remain one. You could pursue recognition through normal channels without artificial deadlines.
For people born after March 27, 2025, the new rules would apply. The government’s goal of ensuring applicants have a genuine connection to Italy can still be achieved through the new framework going forward.
This approach would eliminate the retroactive revocation while allowing the law’s protective purpose to proceed without harming those already born as citizens.
Why Expert Legal Opinion Matters
Multiple legal scholars and judges have weighed in on the unconstitutionality question. Judge Umberto L.C.G. Scotti of Italy’s Court of Cassation published detailed commentary finding the law “remarkably unconstitutional.”
The legal consensus is clear: the 2025 amendments to Italian citizenship law rest on “shaky constitutional ground.”
EU Law and International Protections
What makes this challenge potentially decisive is its grounding in European Union law. When a member state makes changes that affect EU citizenship (which flows from national citizenship), those changes must comply with EU principles of proportionality, reasonableness, and non-discrimination.
The Turin court’s challenge emphasized this angle. National citizenship rules that result in loss of EU citizenship—without individual examination of each case and without a reasonable connection to legitimate policy goals—may violate EU principles.
This creates a two-level constitutional framework: Italian courts are questioning whether the law violates Italian constitutional principles, while also suggesting that it may violate EU law. That dual vulnerability makes it difficult for the law to survive intact.
What Happens Now
The Constitutional Court will now consider these cases. The court could completely invalidate Article 3-bis, though legal experts consider this unlikely. Alternatively, the court could partially invalidate the law by striking down the retroactive provisions, which most experts predict is the most likely outcome. Another possibility is that the court could uphold the law entirely, though this seems unlikely given the constitutional concerns raised by multiple courts. The court might also conditionally uphold the law while requiring that certain provisions be interpreted more narrowly than currently written.
Most legal experts predict that the Constitutional Court will declare the retroactive portions unconstitutional while preserving the law for future births. This would restore rights for those born before March 27, 2025, while allowing the government’s new framework to apply prospectively.
What This Means for Your Citizenship Application
If you were born before March 27, 2025, you potentially have much stronger legal arguments now that these courts have raised constitutional questions. Even if you missed the deadline under the new law or don’t perfectly fit the new law’s conditions, you may be able to challenge a refusal in court. The constitutional questions raised by the Mantua and Turin courts suggest that retroactive application of the new rules is fundamentally problematic and may not hold up in court.
If you’re currently planning to apply for Italian citizenship, understand that Italian citizenship law is in flux right now. The law you see today might be partially struck down tomorrow by the Constitutional Court. This legal uncertainty is actually important information—it means you should consider consulting with an experienced Italian citizenship attorney who understands the constitutional challenges and can position your case in the most strategic way possible going forward.
The general principle that is emerging from all these court challenges is this: citizenship acquired at birth cannot be taken away retroactively for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons. If you had a right under the old law, that right should continue to be recognized and protected, even if the law changes going forward for people born in the future.
A Turning Point in Italian Citizenship Law
The Mantua and Turin Court challenges have made a clear statement: fundamental rights like citizenship, equality, access to justice, and participation in democracy cannot simply be swept away through emergency decree procedures or retroactive legislation applied arbitrarily.
The Constitutional Court now faces a significant decision. Multiple lower courts have raised serious concerns. International obligations are implicated. The legal consensus among experts is that the law is unconstitutional in its current form.
For Italian descendants worldwide, the Mantua challenge offers something precious: a reminder that the law is not settled, that constitutional principles still matter, and that the courts may yet protect rights that seemed lost under Law 74/2025.
The next chapter in Italian citizenship law will be written by the Constitutional Court. Stay tuned.
Key Sources and Further Reading
The information in this article is drawn from the Court of Mantua Ordinance from October 24, 2025 on Article 3-bis constitutionality, the Constitutional Court Judgment No. 142/2025 on citizenship transmission, and the Court of Turin Order No. 167/2025 from June 25, 2025 on Law 74/2025. Additional analysis comes from Judge Umberto L.C.G. Scotti’s commentary on Constitutional Court Judgment 142/2025 and ongoing Italian Constitutional Court proceedings on citizenship law challenges.
Have questions about how the Mantua court challenge affects your specific situation? Get Italian Citizenship, Inc. stays current on these rapidly developing legal issues. Contact our team for a consultation tailored to your circumstances.