Legislation in question: part 1 of Art 6.21 of the Code of Administrative Offences.
Legal issue: the constitutionality of the rule imposing administrative liability for propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among non-adults.
Ratio decidendi: the Court disagreed with the opinion of the applicants and held the legislation in question to be conformant to the Constitution. It pointed out that the legislator had before him the task of ensuring a balance of interests of all members of the Russian society and an equilibrium of constitutionally significant values – the principles of individual autonomy and non-intervention in private life and freedom of speech, on the one hand, and protection of the family and childhood, on the other. The purpose of the legislator was to protect children from information capable of inducing them to nontraditional sexual relations, adherence to which would impede the making of family relations, as they are traditionally understood in Russia and are expressed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The Constitutional Court acknowledged that the capability of the information, even in its importunate form, to influence the future life of a child is not conclusively proven. Still, the federal legislator, keeping in mind the priority goal of ensuring the rights of a child and seeking a balance of constitutionally protected values, may use when estimating the necessity of certain restrictions the criteria based on the presumption of there being a threat to the interests of a child. The contested provision is not discriminatory, it does not imply an automatic prohibition against nontraditional sexual relations or an intervention of the State in sexual self-determination of a person. The terms used in the law (“nontraditional sexual relations” and “distorted idea of social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations”) do not, in view of the Court, suggest a negative evaluation by the State of nontraditional sexual relations as such and do not aim at the derogation of honour and dignity of citizens who practice such relations.
At the same time, only those actions may be regarded as an administrative offence, which, proceeding from the purpose and circumstances of their commission, lead to popularisation and obtrusion of nontraditional sexual relations upon minors; in other words, a formalistic attitude and broad interpretation of the prohibition by law enforcing bodies is impermissible.
