ROME -- The constitutional court has ruled that Italian children will now for the first time be allowed to have the mother’s surname as well as the father’s if born in wedlock, judicial sources said Wednesday.

 The first proposal for this law in parliament dates back to 40 years ago, and only in the last week was it finally passed. Italy's lower house had approved a bill aimed at changing the law, but it had been blocked in the Senate for years. The judges have now declared the automatic attribution of the paternal surname to children in Italy unconstitutional.

 The board said that “the constitutional court has today taken up the question of constitutional legislation raised by the Genoese Court of Appeal about children’s surnames. The court has declared the illegality of the norm that sees the automatic attribution of the paternal surname to a legitimate child, if there is a different wish from the parents.”

 The case that caused the Genoese Court of Appeal to raise this point was that of an Italo-Brazilian couple who wanted to add the mother’s surname to the father’s for their child.

 The couple’s lawyer Susanna Schivo had deemed the actual system, which dates from Roman times, “clearly irrational.” It was a principle that was not ratified by a specific norm, but derives from different regulatory measures, like in some articles from the civil code.

After their request was rejected by Italian authorities, they took the case to the ECHR -- European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in their favour in 2014 and condemned Italy to change the law as it was incompatible with Italy’s modern constitution and its views on gender equality.

 nkd