Legislation in question: Paragrah 7 of part 3 of Article 82 of the Federal law “On the Service in the Bodies of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and on Making Changes in Certain Legislative Acts  of the Russian Federation”.

Legal issue: The constitutionality of the rule, under which the very fact of bringing a policeman to criminal liability in cases of public prosecution, even if the offence he committed has been subsequently decriminalised, serve as an unconditional ground for dismissing him from service.

Ratio decidendi: The contested regulation does not conform to the Constitution. It is analogical to the one which has already been held to be unconstitutional in the Judgment of 21 March 2014 № 7-П. The only distinction is that in the former case the Court was scrutinizing a dismissal flowing from private criminal accusation. Since the legal significance of decriminalisation is of general character and should not change depending on particular grounds for termination of criminal prosecution of the person and on whether his actions which were subsequently decriminalised were categorised as cases of public or private accusation, the regulation in question is inconsistent with the character of the Russian Federation as a rule-of-law State, whose supreme value is the rights and freedoms of the man and the citizen, which are subject to protection on the basis of the constitutional principle of equality.