Italy: non-biological mothers in same-sex couples entitled to paternity leave (ruling)

In a ruling on 21 July, Italy’s Constitutional Court struck down a provision of a 2001 law, which was amended in 2022 to make paternity leave compulsory but limited this right to fathers, thereby excluding non-biological mothers in same-sex female couples. In its statement, the court considered the “disparity in treatment between couples of parents of different sexes and couples of two women” to be “manifestly unreasonable” if both are recognised as mothers of the child in the civil...