Published: July 20, 2026 | Author: Avv. Salvatore Aprigliano | Aprigliano International Law Firm

Italian citizenship by descent after Tajani Decree (Law 74/2025): how a 1948 maternal-line case, with a naturalization that occurred while the intermediate ancestor was still a minor, was granted under Article 3-bis, letter c)

SHORT ANSWER

The Palermo Court recognized Italian citizenship jure sanguinis for a second-generation applicant in a case filed on March 31, 2026, after the March 27, 2025 cutoff introduced by the Tajani Decree, in a judgment published on June 29, 2026 (Judge Dott.ssa Beatrice Ragusa).

The new law requires that a first- or second-degree ascendant hold, or have held at death, exclusively Italian citizenship. Here the grandmother had “become” a U.S. citizen. Yet the Court still recognized the applicant, because that naturalization was involuntary — the automatic effect of her marriage to a U.S. citizen — and therefore legally void (tamquam non esset). The grandmother is deemed to have remained exclusively Italian until her death.

It is a pre-1948 maternal-line case that also carried a “minor issue”: the grandmother’s naturalization occurred while the applicant’s mother was still a minor. The same principle neutralized both obstacles at once.

Why this Palermo Court Italian citizenship jure sanguinis ruling matters for post-Tajani litigation

Since the Tajani Decree, the public conversation has focused on two things: the generational limit and the “exclusively Italian” requirement now written into Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992. Read literally, that requirement seems to shut the door on any family where the Italian ancestor ever acquired a foreign citizenship.

This Palermo Court Italian citizenship jure sanguinis judgment shows why the word “exclusively” must be read together with the rest of Italian citizenship law, not in isolation. An ancestor who appears to have naturalized abroad may, in law, never have lost Italian citizenship at all, if that acquisition of foreign nationality was not the product of a free and voluntary choice. When that is the case, the ancestor is treated as having held Italian citizenship, and only Italian citizenship, right up to death, which is exactly what letter c) requires.

This is not a marginal scenario. For decades, women who married foreign men automatically took on their husband’s nationality, and often automatically “lost” their own. Those forced changes of status sit at the heart of thousands of jure sanguinis family trees.

 

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What happened in this case

Here is how the Palermo Court reached its decision on Italian citizenship jure sanguinis in this file. The reference ancestor was a woman born in the Province of Palermo, Italy, an Italian citizen by birth. She emigrated to the United States, where she married a U.S. citizen and, through that marriage, gave birth to a daughter in the United States. That daughter, in turn, gave birth to the applicant, also in the United States.

The line of descent is therefore:

Italian-born grandmother (emigrated to the U.S.; “naturalized” by marriage) → mother (born in the U.S.) → applicant (born in the U.S.)

The applicant is thus a second-degree descendant of the Italian-born grandmother. Because the decisive transmission runs through a female ancestor, and involves a pre-1948 birth in the chain, the consular route was closed: to this day the consular authorities decline to recognize the maternal line of transmission for children born before 1948. The only path was the Italian court, the maternal-line (1948) judicial route.

 

Two structural obstacles in a single family tree

1. The pre-1948 maternal line

Under the law in force before the Republican Constitution (Law No. 555/1912), Italian women could not transmit citizenship to children born before January 1, 1948. That historical discrimination is precisely what makes maternal-line cases “1948 cases”: they cannot be resolved administratively and must be brought before an Italian court.

The Constitutional Court dismantled that discrimination in Judgment No. 87/1975, which struck down the automatic loss of Italian citizenship by a woman upon marriage to a foreigner. The Court of Cassation, sitting as Joint Sections in Judgment No. 4466/2009, then extended that protection retroactively, by judicial means, to descendants in the maternal line, including those born before 1948. The Palermo Court applied both, and confirmed that the line of descent was never interrupted.

2. The “minor issue”: a naturalization during the mother’s minority

There was a second layer. The grandmother’s change of status, her “naturalization” through marriage to a U.S. citizen, occurred while the applicant’s mother was still a minor. In many jure sanguinis disputes, this is used as an argument that the minor child derivatively lost Italian citizenship along with the parent, breaking the chain.

That argument only works if there was a valid loss of citizenship to begin with. Here there was none. Because the grandmother’s acquisition of U.S. nationality was involuntary, the automatic legal consequence of her marriage, not a free choice, there was, in law, nothing to lose and nothing to pass down as a loss. If the parent never validly ceased to be Italian, the minor child could not have derivatively lost a status the parent still held. The single principle of the involuntary, and therefore void, naturalization dissolves both the 1948 obstacle and the minor-issue obstacle together.

The heart of the ruling: an involuntary naturalization is treated as never having happened

The Court reasoned that the grandmother became a U.S. citizen involuntarily, as a result of her marriage. Applying the logic of Constitutional Court Judgment No. 87/1975, that kind of forced change of status is constitutionally illegitimate and must be treated as tamquam non esset — as if it had never occurred.

The consequence is decisive. The grandmother was not only Italian at the time of her daughter’s birth; she is deemed to have retained Italian citizenship, and only Italian citizenship, until her death. That is precisely the condition set out in the reformed law.

English translation of the key passages

The following are translated excerpts from the Palermo judgment:

“Since such naturalization was involuntary, it has been held constitutionally illegitimate and therefore tamquam non esset … accordingly, the line of descent was not interrupted.”

“The reference ancestor must be considered to have held exclusively Italian citizenship (with no consequence flowing from her forced naturalization), and she transmitted citizenship to her descendant … The case falls within the scope of letter c) of Article 3-bis of Law No. 91/1992, since the applicant is a second-degree descendant of the ancestor.”

The court did not treat the grandmother’s foreign naturalization as decisive on its face. It treated the involuntary character of that naturalization as the legally operative fact. That is the distinction on which the whole case turns.

How the ruling sits inside the Tajani Decree framework

The case was docketed while Decree-Law No. 36 of March 28, 2025 was in force, as amended by converting Law No. 74 of May 23, 2025 — the Tajani Decree. The reform added Article 3-bis to Law 91/1992, imposing a general bar on recognition for a person born abroad who also holds another citizenship, unless one of these applies:

• a) an application filed with the consulate or a mayor by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025;
• a-bis) an application filed on the date of an appointment already communicated by that date;
• b) a judicial application filed by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on March 27, 2025;
• c) a first- or second-degree ascendant who possesses, or possessed at the time of death, exclusively Italian citizenship;
• d) a parent or adoptive parent who resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the child’s birth or adoption.

The Court noted that this framework survived constitutional review in Constitutional Court Judgment No. 63 of April 30, 2026, and therefore applied the reformed law directly. It then found the case fell squarely within letter c): a second-degree ascendant — the grandmother — deemed to have held exclusively Italian citizenship. The application was granted and the applicant declared an Italian citizen.

 

The strategic point: “exclusively Italian” is a legal question, not just a documentary one

A family looking at this tree might have concluded, at first glance, that the case was hopeless: the grandmother “became American,” so how could she have held exclusively Italian citizenship? That reading treats the word on the page as the end of the analysis.

The correct analysis asks how and why the foreign citizenship was acquired. A naturalization that a person actively sought is very different, in law, from a nationality imposed automatically by marriage. The first may sever the Italian line; the second, under Judgment No. 87/1975, is treated as if it never happened. Post-Tajani, this distinction is no longer a footnote — it can decide the entire case.

This is what we mean when we say jure sanguinis is not over, but has entered a more technical and strategic phase. The outcome turned not on producing a single document, but on correctly characterizing an historical event and building the legal argument around it. It also confirms a point we have made in our related coverage on the Campobasso ruling — that second-generation applicants can still succeed in cases filed after March 27, 2025 when the record and the argument are properly constructed.

 

What this Palermo Court Italian citizenship ruling does not say

Because the outcome is favorable, its limits deserve to be stated plainly:

• It does not hold that any foreign naturalization can be waved away. The point is narrow: a naturalization that was involuntary (here, automatic by marriage) is treated as void.
• It does not mean every maternal-line or every “minor issue” case will succeed. Each turns on its own documents and facts.
• It does not remove the need for a case-specific evidentiary and legal analysis of how and when foreign nationality was acquired.
• It is a first-instance ruling. It does not bind other Italian courts and does not guarantee the same result elsewhere.

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If your Italian female ancestor married a foreign man and appears to have “lost” her Italian citizenship or if a naturalization in your family occurred while an intermediate ancestor was still a minor, this ruling may be relevant to your situation. These cases turn on precise legal characterization, not just genealogy.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Aprigliano International Law Firm. The decision discussed is not binding precedent and offers no guarantee of success in any other case. Individual outcomes depend on the specific facts, documents, and law applicable to each matter.