Legal issue: whether the contested provisions are constitutional as long as they:

• do not extend to legal persons the right to send individual and group petitions to State and municipal bodies;
• do not determine whether the authorities of constitutive entities of the Russian Federation have the right to provide additional (as compared to the federal law) guarantees of the citizens’ rights to petition, including the guarantees concerning: a)  the petitions addressed to State and municipal enterprises and institutions, and б) the extension of guarantees established for petitions of citizens to those of legal persons.

Ratio decidendi: the Court pointed out that the principles of rule-of-law State, equality and justice require from the legislator that a legal rule be certain, clear, unambiguous and coordinated with the current system of legal regulation. The Court came to the conclusion that the contested regulation does not preclude the introduction by regional laws, for the purpose of protecting the constitutional right of citizen to petition, of additional guarantees which, however, should not presuppose the imposition of new duties (or restrictions of rights) upon natural and regal persons. As a result, the Court has deemed to be unconstitutional only those rules which – by virtue of their uncertainty giving rise to equivocal interpretation and, correspondingly, arbitrary application – 1) preclude extending the provisions of the given Federal law to the relations connected with the consideration by the bodies of State power or bodies of local self-government of petitions of associations of citizens, including legal persons, and 2) preclude considering such petitions by those State and municipal institutions and other organizations which exercise public functions, in particular by preventing the constituent entities of the Russian Federation from making laws on the possibility of considering petitions by such institutions and organizations.