The Next Passport
Italian Citizenship · Ancestor PathItalian Citizenship Through Your Mother — The 1948 Judicial Route
This page is informational only and is not legal advice. The 1948 judicial route is an active legal proceeding in Italian civil court. Consult a licensed Italian citizenship attorney for advice specific to your situation.
Last verified: September 7, 2026 · Maintained by The Next Passport (Warner Creates LLC).
Note: Article 3-bis restricts who may be recognised at all — the judicial route is not an exemption from it
Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 — inserted by Decree-Law 36/2025, in force March 29, 2025, and rewritten when Law 74/2025 converted it on May 24, 2025 — treats anyone born abroad who holds another citizenship as never having acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of five conditions applies. It is not a generation count, and it does not test whether an ancestor was born in Italy. Three of those conditions close at 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 — a consular or comune application filed by then (lett. a), an appointment the office had already communicated by then (lett. a-bis), and a judicial claim filed by then (lett. b); the other two turn on an ascendant's exclusive Italian citizenship (lett. c) or on a parent or adoptive parent's two continuous years of residence in Italy (lett. d). The Cassazione Sezioni Unite confirmed on July 26, 2026 that judicial claims filed by that cut-off stay under the earlier law (sentenza n. 24045/2026). The Constitutional Court upheld Article 3-bis in sentenza 63/2026, deposited April 30, 2026 — in a case that itself ran through a woman whose child was born before 1948 — and then, on July 23, 2026, referred the EU-law question to the EU Court of Justice on referrals from the Mantova and Campobasso tribunals (Ordinanza 147/2026). The referral suspends those proceedings; Article 3-bis remains in force. Whether it reaches 1948 constitutional cases has not been decided as a separate holding, but it has already been applied to such a case. see Italian Citizenship Legal Updates →
When a female ancestor in your direct line to Italian citizenship had a child born before January 1, 1948, you cannot apply through the standard consular route — you must instead pursue the 1948 judicial route, a court proceeding that challenges the pre-constitutional gender discrimination built into Italy's original citizenship laws.
The scenario this page is written for: your Italian-citizen grandmother passed Italian citizenship to your mother, who was born before January 1, 1948. Under Italy's pre-1948 citizenship laws, a woman could not transmit Italian citizenship to her children — only men could. Your mother therefore could not inherit citizenship through your grandmother under the old rules. The 1948 judicial route lets you challenge that discrimination in Italian civil court.
This path applies wherever a female Italian ancestor appears in your direct line and her child was born before January 1, 1948. The triggering date is the child's birth date, not the female ancestor's.
Legal basis
- Constitutional basis
- Corte Costituzionale, Sentenza 30/1983 struck down Article 1 no. 1 of Law 555/1912 “nella parte in cui non prevede che sia cittadino per nascita anche il figlio di madre cittadina” — the provision that made only an Italian father a source of citizenship by birth. It is paired with Sentenza 87/1975, which struck the separate rule that an Italian woman lost her citizenship by marrying a foreigner. Both dispositives are reproduced in Normattiva's own amendment notes to Law 555/1912.
- Judicial route
- Corte di Cassazione, Sezioni Unite, n. 4466/2009 — held that citizenship must be recognised judicially to a woman who lost it under Article 10 of Law 555/1912, that her child born before 1948 reacquires it as of January 1, 1948, and that the right then passes to that child's own children. The Cassazione does not publish its 2009 texts, but the Sezioni Unite restate the holding at length in sentenza n. 24045/2026, published July 26, 2026.
- Which court
- Not the ordinary civil court at large: citizenship claims go to a sezione specializzata in materia di immigrazione (Legislative Decree 150/2011, Art. 19-bis(2)), and those sections sit at the ordinary tribunals in the cities that host a Court of Appeal. Where the claimant lives abroad, Article 4(5) of Decree-Law 13/2017 assigns the case “avendo riguardo al comune di nascita del padre, della madre o dell'avo cittadini italiani” — by the Italian comune of birth of the parent or grandparent. That assignment rule was added by Law 206/2021 and applies to proceedings begun on or after June 22, 2022; it is a separate reform from the Cartabia changes to civil procedure. Note what the text names: a parent or grandparent. Where the qualifying ancestor is further back, the rule does not say on its face which section takes the case.
- Processing time
- not published — no tribunale or ministry publishes a duration for 1948 cases. The nearest official statistic is 1,304 days, the 2025 ISTAT Disposition Time for «diritti della cittadinanza» in the ordinary tribunali — 365 × (cases pending at year end ÷ cases resolved that year), which estimates backlog clearance across all citizenship litigation rather than measuring a 1948 case. Check the date before the duration, but note what it actually does: filing by 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025 puts a claim outside Article 3-bis altogether. The route itself stays open — a claim filed after that moment is still heard, and then decided under Article 3-bis like any other.
What changed in court on March 29, 2025
Decree-Law 36/2025 added two evidentiary rules to Article 19-bis of Legislative Decree 150/2011, and they bear directly on what a 1948 claim costs to assemble. First, neither an oath nor witness testimony is admissible in a citizenship claim — a gap in the paper record can no longer be closed by someone testifying to what the family knows. Second, the person seeking recognition must plead and prove the absence of every statutory cause of non-acquisition or loss, rather than the state having to show that one occurred. In practice the negative evidence — the certification that an ancestor never naturalized, the records ruling out a break in the chain — is now yours to produce, and it has to be in hand before the ricorso is filed rather than argued for afterwards.
The triggering condition
A 1948 judicial case is required when both of the following are true: (1) a female ancestor in your direct line held Italian citizenship, and (2) her child — the next person in your descent chain — was born before January 1, 1948. If all female-to-child transmissions in your chain occurred on or after January 1, 1948, you do not need the judicial route.
Not sure which route applies to you?
Our free eligibility check walks through your specific generation chain and female-ancestor dates, then tells you whether you likely need the 1948 judicial route or qualify through the standard consular process.
Check your eligibility →Documents typically required
The 1948 judicial route requires the same underlying genealogical documentation as the consular route, plus court-specific filings. Consult an Italian citizenship attorney for your full document list — requirements vary by court and case.
- 1
Complete chain of vital records. Birth, marriage, and death certificates for every person in the direct line from the Italian female ancestor to you. US-issued documents require an apostille and certified Italian translation.
- 2
Italian ancestor's documents. Italian birth certificate, marriage certificate, and (if applicable) death certificate from the ancestor's comune of origin. Request these directly from the Italian municipality.
- 3
Proof of naturalization status. Evidence of whether and when the Italian ancestor acquired another citizenship before the child's birth. For US lines the record is split between two agencies: the National Archives holds naturalizations granted by federal courts before October 1991 and says that, as a general rule, it does not hold naturalizations created in state or local courts, while USCIS holds the duplicate certificate in a Certificate File (September 27, 1906 to March 31, 1956) or an Alien File (from April 1, 1956) through its Genealogy Program. Where the ancestor never naturalized, only USCIS can issue a Certification of Non-Existence of a Record of Naturalization; the National Archives can issue only a negative search letter, which is not the same document.
- 4
Certified translations. All non-Italian documents must be translated into Italian by a qualified sworn translator. The court will not accept machine translations.
- 5
Court petition (ricorso). A formal legal petition (ricorso) filed through an Italian attorney (avvocato) admitted before the competent tribunale. Budget for the court contribution as well: it is charged for each claimant named, even when a family brings one joint case, so it multiplies with the number of applicants rather than being paid once.
Learn more about the 1948 judicial route
For a full explanation of how the 1948 judicial process works — including court timelines, the July 2026 Sezioni Unite ruling and the pending EU Court of Justice referral, and how this route differs from the standard consular process — see our dedicated 1948 case guide.
The 1948 Case: Complete Guide →Ready to start organizing your documents?
Start your free eligibility check →Not affiliated with the Italian government, any consulate, or any citizenship attorney. Information is sourced from published Italian court decisions and government sources, and may change without notice. This is a rapidly evolving area of law — verify with a licensed attorney before taking action. As of .