Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 106
March 2008
P.B. and J.S. v. Austria - 18984/02
Decision 20.3.2008 [Section I]
Article 14
Discrimination
Exclusion of person in homosexual relationship from insurance cover as dependant of a civil servant: admissible
The applicants live together in a homosexual relationship. The second applicant is a civil servant and has accident and sickness insurance cover with the Civil Servants Insurance Corporation (CSIC). A request by the first applicant for the CSIC to recognise him as the second applicant’s dependant for insurance purposes was turned down as the legislation applicable at the time defined “dependants” as either a related person or as an unrelated person of the opposite sex and so excluded persons living in a homosexual relationship. The Constitutional Court declined to interfere with that decision as it considered that the legislature had acted within the bounds of its wide margin of appreciation in that sphere. An administrative court to which the case was subsequently transferred held that there was no issue under Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 8 of the European Convention as the latter provision did not guarantee specific social rights and the difference in treatment was in any event justified by differences in the factual situation. In a separate case, the Constitutional Court later ruled that two similar statutory provisions were discriminatory after expressly citing the European Court’s judgment of 24 July 2003 in the case of Karnerv. Austria (no. 40016/98, see Information Note no. 55).
Admissible under Article 14, read in conjunction with Article 8 and in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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