Category: ECtHR

P.C. v Ireland

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European Court of Human Rights, Fifth Section (App. No. 26922/19), [2022] ECHR 26922/19, 1 September 2022

The ECtHR rejected a claim that the non-payment to the applicant of his state pension while he was in prison breached Article 14 read with A1P1. The Court rejected the claim that the disparate impact the rule had on the applicant, as someone with no other source of income, related to a “status” for the purposes of Article 14, ruling at §79 that “The different impact that the disqualification had on prisoners with and without other social security entitlements or other forms of income is not related to an aspect of their personal status”. It accepted that being a prisoner could amount to a status but denied that he was similarly situated, for the purposes of an Article 14 claim, with non-convicted persons detained in psychiatric institutions who were “patients, not prisoners” (§85). Nor was he similarly situated with prisoners held on remand who were entitled to continued payment of state pensions (§92) in view of the entitlement of remand prisoners to be presumed innocent.

L. F. v The United Kingdom

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European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section) (App. No. 19839/21) [2022] ECHR 19839/21, 16 June 2022

This was an appeal to the ECtHR from the decision of the Supreme Court in R (Z & Anor) v Hackney LBC & Anor [2020] UKSC 40 (see previous post). The European Court of Human Rights dismissed the application to the Court as inadmissible.  The Applicant complained that the preferential treatment of members of the Orthodox Jewish Community (“OJC” below) breached her Article 8 and 14 ECHR rights. The Court accepted that Article 8 was engaged for the purposes of Article 14 but found that the preferential treatment in issue was proportionate and lawful. (References to LBH and AIHA below are to the London Borough of Hackney and the Orthodox Jewish housing association which managed the accommodation whose tenancy criteria Z challenged.) According to the Court: Continue reading →

Benkharbouche and Janah v United Kingdom

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ECtHR, App. Nos. 19059/18 and 19725/18, [2022] ECHR 19059/18, [2022] ECHR 19725/18

The ECtHR accepted the UK Government’s concessions that it had breached the Article 6 and 14 rights of the second claimant, a domestic worker whose claims against the State of Libya had been blocked by the State Immunity Act. Continue reading →

Caamaño Valle v Spain

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ECtHR, Third Section, App. No. 43564/17, [2021] ECHR 43564/17, 11 May 2021

Judge Lemmens (President), Judges Serghides, Dedov, Ravarani, Elósegui, Seibert-Fohr, Roosma

This case, which concerned the disenfranchisement of a mentally incapacitated adult, is perhaps most notable for the eviscerating dissent of the Third Section President, Judge Lemmans, who ruled that there had been a breach of A3P1, read alone and in conjunction Article 14 of the Convention and A1P12. In doing so he favoured the approach of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, who intervened, over the view of his colleagues who acknowledged, but did not follow, the jurisprudence developed under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Judge Lemmems presents a compelling case for an “inclusive equality” implying “the full recognition of humanity through inclusion in society” (citing the CRPD Committee)and encourages a critical reading of the majority judgment in this case. Continue reading →

Women’s Initiatives Supporting Group & Ors v Georgia

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ECtHR, 5th Section, Apps. Nos. 73204/13 and 74959/13, 16 December 2021

Judge O’Leary (President), Judges Yudkivska, Ilievski, Chanturia, Jelić, Bårdsen, Guyomar

The ECtHR ruled that the respondent State’s failure to protect the applicants’ public rally from homophobic and/or transphobic acts of violence by counter-demonstrators and to conduct an effective investigation into the incident breached Article 14 ECHR read with Articles 3 and 11. The individual applicants were Georgian nationals and the applicant associations were Georgian NGOs set up to promote and protect the rights of LGBT people in Georgia. They complained that the Ministry of the Interior had taken inadequate steps to protect participants in various peaceful demonstrations despite having been notified of various threats from identifiable individuals. 2 000 police officers had been deployed but had failed to protect protestors from intimidation and, in some cases, physical assault. Georgia had also failed in its duty to investigate the events. The Court was satisfied that the failures to protect and to investigate had reached the threshold required for Article 3. It awarded the damages sought by the applicants which ranged from 2 500 to 10 000 Euro although it rejected their applications for costs on the basis that they were not evidenced. Continue reading →

Association Accept and Others v Romania

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ECtHR, Fourth Section, App. No.19237/16, [2021] ECHR 19237/16, 1 June 2021

Judge Grozev (President), Judges Vehabović, Motoc, Harutyunyan, Kucsko-Stadlmayer, Vilanova, Martins

The ECtHR ruled that Romania had breached the Article 14 rights of the individual applicants and the applicant association by failing to protect them from demonstrators who were permitted to disrupt the showing of a film with “homosexual overtones”, and by failing to take adequate measures against those involved. In reaching this conclusiont he Court inferred from the authorities’ failures “a certain bias against homosexuals”. The applicant association was not recognised as having standing in relation to the claim insofar as it was based on Article 8  but was recognised for the purposes of the claim under Article 14 and 11.  Nor did the Court accept that the threshold for the application of Article 3 was met by verbal abuse alone. It declined to consider the claim under A1P12. Continue reading →

Yocheva and Ganeva v Bulgaria

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ECtHR, Fourth Section,  App. Nos. 18592/15 and 43863/15, [2021] ECHR 18592/15, 11 May 2021

Judge Eicke (President), Judges Grozev, Vehabović, Motoc, Harutyunyan, Vilanova, Guerra Martins

Here the ECtHR ruled that Bulgaria had breached Articles 8 and 14 by excluding from entitlement to a family allowance payable to families with only one living parent, single mothers of minor children whose fathers were unknown. The Court found, inter alia, that the exclusion amounted to sex discrimination because “as maternity is determined by the act of birth, in the vast majority of cases it is only children’s paternity that can be unknown” (§110-111). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was unsympathetic to the argument put for the state that the rule was justified because it “was a regular practice of certain ethnic and social communities in Bulgaria to ‘pretend’ that the mother was a single parent so as to more easily obtain State benefit” (§§98, 121). Continue reading →