Information Note on the Court’s case-law 251
May 2021
Caamaño Valle v. Spain - 43564/17
Judgment 11.5.2021 [Section III]
Article 3 of Protocol No. 1
Free expression of the opinion of the people
Vote
Justified disenfranchisement of person with intellectual disability, based on thorough, individualised assessment by domestic courts: no violation
Facts – The applicant’s daughter (M.) has an intellectual disability. As M. approached the age of 18, the applicant lodged a request for M. to be deprived of her legal capacity and that her legal guardianship over her daughter be extended. When granting the request, the First-Instance Judge also decided that M.’s right to vote should be revoked. The applicant appealed unsuccessfully against the disenfranchisement of M.
Law – Article 34:
The Court noted that the application had been brought by the applicant in her own name, acting on behalf of her daughter, M. It accepted that, under Spanish law, the applicant had been exercising the rights of her disabled daughter. The judicial process at each domestic instance had consisted precisely of the domestic proceedings initiated by the mother with the intention of extending her custody over her disabled daughter: that process had ended with the declaration of her daughter’s incapacity and the extension of the legal guardianship. The Court therefore considered that the applicant had the required capacity to lodge the present application. It proceeded, however, under the assumption that the actual victim of the alleged violation in the case was M.
Article 3 of Protocol No. 1:
(a) M’s disenfranchisement
The measure complained of had pursued the aim of ensuring that only citizens capable of assessing the consequences of their decisions and of making conscious and judicious decisions should participate in public affairs. The Court was therefore satisfied that the measure had pursued a legitimate aim.
At the relevant time the Spanish system did not establish an automatic bar on voting in respect of persons under guardianship in situations similar to that of the applicant’s daughter, but took into account such persons’ actual faculties, to be analysed during judicial proceedings brought in order for such persons to be declared incapable. The law had provided for the deprivation of the right to vote only in respect of the most serious cases of disability and in respect of persons ruled incapacitated by a final judicial decision (always revisable according to the personal circumstances) declaring specifically that the person in question was incapable of exercising the right to vote.
While the law had been amended in 2018 so as to eliminate the possibility of restricting disabled people’s right to vote, returning voting rights to all persons with a mental disability without exception, that did not imply that the previous system had been incompatible with the requirements of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.
The Court examined whether the domestic courts had thoroughly examined the justification of the limitation of M.’s rights, in the light of the Convention principles. M. had not lost her right to vote as the result of an automatic blanket restriction but as the result of an explicit decision taken in the course of separate incapacity proceedings that had been initiated at the request of her parents (contrast Alajos Kiss v. Hungary). Her parents had initiated the proceedings because they had been aware that their daughter had serious problems that rendered her unable to manage her life on her own. Four different judicial bodies had been involved in the assessment of M.’s “fitness to vote”. The First-Instance Judge had examined the applicant’s daughter’s legal capacity in depth and – after weighing the interests at stake and evaluating the evidence and reports made within that process – had ruled that the guardianship should be extended and that M. should be deprived of her right to vote because she had a lack of cognitive skills to understand the meaning of a vote and was prone to be influenced very easily. That decision had been confirmed by the Regional Court on appeal and upheld by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had examined the substance of the appeals lodged by the applicant and had found that the decision of the Regional Court had contained a thorough analysis of the case and had correctly balanced the interests at stake. Finally, the Constitutional Court had dismissed an amparo appeal, after having found that the contested judicial decisions had been based on an individualised examination of the applicant’s daughter’s situation and had not manifested any arbitrariness, irrationality or obvious error.
M.’s disenfranchisement had therefore not been disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued.
(b) The free expression of the opinion of the people
Any limitation of the right to vote had to be analysed not only from the perspective of the individual concerned, but also from the perspective of democratic society as a whole, since each individual’s right is embedded within the broader framework of the electoral system.
It was for each State to determine how the “free” expression of the opinion of the people was to be ensured while at the same time making provision that the opinion expressed represented the one “of the people”. While a number of States emphasised the right of all people to participate in elections, others emphasised the requirement of a free and self-determined electoral choice by the voters, thus prohibiting persons with certain mental disabilities from participating in elections. Both systems fell within the margin of appreciation of the States, as long as – in the second system – the conditions for disenfranchisement applied only to those persons who were effectively unable to make a free and self-determined electoral choice.
Having regard to the reasons for the exclusion of M. from the electoral process, the Court considered that the contested measure did not thwart the free expression of the opinion of the people.
Conclusion: no violation (six votes to one).
The Court also found, by six votes to one, that there had been no violation of either Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, or Article 1 of Protocol No. 12, since, even assuming that M. could be deemed to be in a comparable position to other persons whose legal capacity had not been modified, the difference of treatment was justified.
(See also Alajos Kiss v. Hungary, 33832/06, 20 May 2010, Legal Summary; Strøbye And Rosenlind v. Denmark, 25802/18 and 27338/18, 2 February 2021, Legal Summary)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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