Legislation in question: part 1 of Article 2 of the Federal law of 12 February 2001 № 5-ФЗ “On Making Changes and Additions to the Law of the Russian Federation “On the Social Protection of the Citizens Affected by the Radiation As a Result of the Catastrophe of Chernobyl APP”.

Legal issue: the constitutionality of denial of the right of disabled persons from the ranks of the police, whose disability was caused by fighting Chernobyl disaster, to monetary compensation in the amount equal to the non-received sums of compensation for the damage to health.

Ratio decidendi:  the Constitutional Court has found that the contested rule was applied by courts of general jurisdiction in the applicants’ case without due regard to the position of the Constitutional Court, as articulated in the judgment of 7 February 2012 № 1-П. In such a contingency, when a certain rule was held by the Court to be not contradicting the Constitution, provided that it is interpreted and applied solely in the constitutional legal sense established by the Constitutional Court, but in practice is still interpreted in a different way, and the confirmation of its true constitutional legal meaning is necessary to curb violations of constitutional rights and freedoms that occur in law-enforcement practices, the Constitutional Court, according to its judgment of 7 November 2012 № 24-П has a right to deem such provision in its wrong interpretation to be non-conformant to the Constitution. To such a case does not apply the rule of the Law on the Constitutional Court that runs that the Court shall refuse to consider the application if there exists its earlier judgment on the subject of application – such a rule should not apply to the situation when subsequent court decisions that were based on another (i.e. unconstitutional) interpretation have entered into legal force and were examined by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, so that the deeming of such provisions to be unconstitutional remains as the only means of restoring the rights of the applicant. Since in the case at hand the situation was exactly such – the courts of all instances had ignored the position of the Constitutional Court expressed in its judgment 7 February 2012 № 1-П – the Constitutional Court found it necessary to declare the provisions in question to be unconstitutional in their interpretation which denies their true constitutional meaning.