On Monday, 31 August, a case “On Compliance of Section 146(1) of the Civil Law, Section 34 of the Civil Status Documents Registration Law, Paragraphs 133 and 141 and Annex 17 of Cabinet Regulation No. 761 ‘Regulations Regarding Civil Status Document Registers’ adopted on 3 September 2013 with Article 91 and the First Sentence of Article 110 of the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia” was initiated in the Constitutional Court.
The contested norms determine the procedure for entering information about the mother of a child in the birth register as well as provide for the procedure for supplementing the birth register and issuing a birth certificate with new content.
The applicants are person AA and person AB. Person AA has entered into a partnership with the biological mother of person AB. The judgment of the Administrative District Court found that the relationship between AA and AB is to be recognized as a family relationship within the meaning of Article 110 of the Constitution. Based on that judgment, the applicants applied to the municipal civil registry office asking to supplement the birth register of person AB with an entry of person AA as his mother and issue a birth certificate with new content. The civil registry office rejected the request.
The applicants consider that the contested norms, by preventing the establishment of the parent-child status recognized by a court judgment in the child’s birth certificate and birth register, infringe their right to family protection, which is enshrined in the First Sentence of Article 110 of the Constitution. In their view, the legislator has thus failed to establish a system of social, economic and legal protection of the family that would protect a family of same-sex partners who jointly raise a child. Furthermore, the best interests of the child are not safeguarded, since the child growing up in such a family is not protected in personal and property relations. The contested norms also violate the principle of legal equality enshrined in Article 91 of the Constitution, because they unjustifiably provide for equal treatment of groups of persons in different circumstances, allowing only a woman and a man to be entered as parents in the birth register.
The Constitutional Court invited the Saeima and the Cabinet to submit a written reply with a statement of the facts of the case and legal arguments by 2 November 2026. The deadline for the preparation of the case is 1 February 2027. The Court will decide on the type of proceedings and the date of hearing the case after the case has been prepared.
Linked case: 2026-15-0103