Italy’s highest court strengthens citizenship claims by descendants of Italian emigrants

ROME (AP) — Italy’s highest court has ruled that children born with Italian citizenship do not automatically lose it when a parent later becomes a citizen of another country, a decision expected to bolster citizenship-by-descent claims by descendants of Italian emigrants worldwide.The ruling resolves a long-running legal dispute known as the “Minor Issue,” which has affected thousands of ancestry-based citizenship cases involving families who left Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, experts say.The ruling — dated Sunday but published Wednesday — was made by the Court of Cassation's highest-level panel for resolving conflicting legal interpretations.At the center of the dispute was whether children automatically lost Italian citizenship when an Italian parent later acquired a foreign nationality while the children were still minors.Under a restrictive interpretation adopted in a series of court decisions beginning in 2023, many applications by later generations were rejected because authorities considered the line of citizenship transmission to have been interrupted.What the court decidedIn its new ruling, the court said that under Italy’s historical citizenship laws, children who were already Italian citizens by birth under the principle of “iure sanguinis,” or citizenship by bloodline, did not automatically lose their Italian citizenship when a parent became a citizen of another country.The court clarified that children born in countries that automatically grant citizenship at birth — including the United States — retained their Italian citizenship even if their parents later naturalized there. Because they remained Italian citizens, they could pass that citizenship on to subsequent generations.The ruling represents a reversal of recent practiceLawyer Marco Mellone, who represented applicants in the case, explained that the ruling reversed a restrictive interpretation that had blocked citizenship claims in recent years, many by U.S. citizens.“The Supreme Court of Cassation has completely changed its position and gone back, confirming that all these Italian-American families — and, more generally, families in all countries where this situation existed — regain the right to Italian citizenship by descent,” Mellone told The Associated Press.What the decision means for people of Italian ancestryThe decision could have broad implications for descen…