Six months after the decision of the Constitutional Court, the Government Commission on Legislative Activities
approved the
draft law submitted by the Ministry of Education and Science on clarifying the categories of persons in respect of which the prohibition is established to be adoptive parents or guardians.
In March 2015, the State Duma
adopted this bill. And a month later, President Vladimir Putin
signed the amendments, thereby officially allowing the adoption of children by former prisoners convicted of minor or moderate crimes.
In 2018, the Constitutional Court will rely on the theses of this judgment already when considering the complaint of a married couple from the Moscow region, who decided to adopt a three-year-old nephew who lived with them from birth. However, the court refused them, explaining that the potential adoptive mother suffers from a "disease that prevents adoption." While hospitalized due to a
miscarriage in 2012, she was infected with HIV infection and hepatitis C. In May 2017, the court of appeal upheld this decision.
The spouses asked the Constitutional Court to check the constitutionality of subparagraph 6 of paragraph 1 of Art. 127 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation and paragraph 2 of the List of diseases in the presence of which a person cannot adopt (adopt) a child.
"
The complaint stated that HIV infection was not transmitted by household means, and that neither the husband had contracted HIV infection for five years, nor the child for two and a half years. The spouses also drew attention to the high effectiveness of modern therapy prescribed for HIV-infected people, from which they conclude that the restrictions on adoption for this narrow group of people are based on an imaginary threat," "Interfax"
wrote.
The CC noted that "the legislators have the right to exercise some caution" when regulating such issues: the established restriction on adoption for persons with HIV infection or hepatitis C is aimed at not exposing the health of children to excessive risk, and therefore is not a violation.
At the same time, the possibility of adoption, especially if the child is already brought up in this family, is consistent with the general legal principle of humanism and constitutional guarantees. The contested acts are considered in judicial practice as implying refusal to adopt a child with formal confirmation of only the fact that a potential parent has HIV infection or hepatitis C. This excludes the possibility of taking into account all circumstances worthy of attention: for example, as in the case of the applicants that adoption allows only legal registration of the existing relationship between the parent and the child, without increasing the risks to the health of the latter.
As a result, this time too the Constitutional Court recognized the contested norms as inconsistent with the Constitution of the Russian Federation, to the extent that these provisions serve in judicial practice as grounds for refusing to adopt a child, if the person infected with HIV or hepatitis C virus, if they, due to already established family relations live with this person. The Constitutional Court decided to reconsider the case of the family. A case similar to this happened at the same time in Krasnoyarsk - then an HIV-positive grandmother was not allowed to take custody of her grandson, but the current decision of the Constitutional Court
resolved this injustice.
Pavel Chikov, a
lawyer who represented the family, called the ruling "a major step towards reducing discrimination." "The Constitutional Court decided to make a small concession, essentially allowing adoption only for children who actually live in families of people living with HIV and / or HCV for a long time, if this is in the interests of the child. The Constitutional Court did not have enough courage to allow such people to adopt children from orphanages," Chikov
said in a conversation with "RBC".
Despite the fact that the possibility of adoption by HIV-infected Russians of children was discussed in the Ministry of Health for a long time, the matter moved forward only after the decision of the Constitutional Court - in the fall of 2018 it
became known that the government had begun developing
a bill amending Art. 127 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation.
In February 2019, the State Duma Committee on Health Protection
recommended the adoption in the first reading of a bill allowing people with HIV, hepatitis C and other diseases to officially adopt children who already live with them.
On May 30, 2019, President Vladimir Putin
signed this law.