RULING NO. 153

YEAR 2025

ITALIAN REPUBLIC

IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE

THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

composed of:

President: Giovanni AMOROSO;

Judges: Francesco VIGANÒ, Luca ANTONINI, Stefano PETITTI, Angelo BUSCEMA, Emanuela NAVARRETTA, Maria Rosaria SAN GIORGIO, Marco D’ALBERTI, Giovanni PITRUZZELLA, Antonella SCIARRONE ALIBRANDI, Massimo LUCIANI, Maria Alessandra SANDULLI, Roberto Nicola CASSINELLI, Francesco Saverio MARINI,
has pronounced the following

RULING

in the constitutional legitimacy judgment concerning Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law of February 18, 1989, no. 56 (Regulation of the Psychology Profession), initiated by the Ordinary Court of Rome, Eleventh Civil Section, in the proceeding between P.P. A.d.P. and the Lazio Order of Psychologists, with an order dated January 13, 2025, registered under no. 32 of the ordinary rulings register of 2025 and published in the Official Gazette of the Republic no. 9, special first series, of 2025.

Having viewed the submissions of P.P. A.d.P. and the Lazio Order of Psychologists;

having heard Judge Rapporteur Maria Alessandra Sandulli in the public hearing of September 24, 2025;

having heard the advocates Paolo Mazzoli for P.P. A.d.P. and Paolo Caruso for the Lazio Order of Psychologists;

deliberated in the Chamber of Council on September 24, 2025.

Facts of the Case

1.– With order of January 13, 2025, registered under no. 32 of the ordinary rulings register of 2025, the Ordinary Court of Rome, Eleventh Civil Section, raised, with reference to Article 3 of the Constitution, a question of constitutional legitimacy regarding Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law of February 18, 1989, no. 56 (Regulation of the Psychology Profession), which stipulates that "[e]xpulsion [from the register of psychologists] shall be pronounced by right when the registrant, by a final judgment, has been sentenced to a custodial penalty of no less than two years for a non-culpable offense.”

2.– The referring judge states that it must rule on the appeal filed by P.P. A.d.P. against the measure by which the Council of the Lazio Order of Psychologists imposed upon him the disciplinary sanction of expulsion from the register, in compliance with the provisions of Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law no. 56 of 1989, solely on the basis that a criminal judge (specifically, the same Court of Rome), with an irrevocable judgment, had found him liable for the crime referred to in Articles 223, paragraph 2, number 2), and 219, paragraph 1, of Royal Decree of March 16, 1942, no. 267 (Regulation of Bankruptcy, Composition with Creditors, Controlled Administration, and Compulsory Administrative Liquidation). It is further noted that, during the proceedings, both parties pleaded the unconstitutionality of the aforementioned provision, as it, by establishing the expulsion by right of the registrant in the event of a final conviction to a custodial penalty of no less than two years for a non-culpable offense, allegedly introduced a sanctioning automatism, in violation of the principles of gradualism and proportionality of the disciplinary sanction, as well as the principles of reasonableness and equality.

3.– Regarding the relevance of the issue, the a quo judge asserts that the decision in the appeal proceedings could not disregard the application of the challenged provision, considering that the sanctioning party had imposed the disciplinary sanction of expulsion by right upon the appellant, without any discretionary assessment regarding the gravity of his conduct.

4.– As for the non-manifest groundlessness, the referring judge reviews the rulings by which this Court has declared the unconstitutionality of analogous provisions that, in other sectors, provided for the dismissal of public employees or the cancellation of professionals from their respective registers, as an automatic consequence of the relative criminal conviction. In particular, the order highlights that "[s]pecifically, the Constitutional Court, with Ruling no. 971/1988, declared the unconstitutionality of the norm providing for the automatic dismissal of civil servants of the State and local authority employees of the Sicilian Region following a conviction for certain crimes; with Ruling no. 40/1990, it addressed the norm providing for the automatic dismissal of notaries; with Ruling no. 158/1990, it declared the unconstitutionality of the norm concerning the automatic expulsion of chartered accountants; with Ruling no. 16/1991, it declared the unconstitutionality of the provision concerning the automatic dismissal of regional employees; with Ruling no. 197/1993, it ruled on the automatic dismissal of public administration employees following the finalization of a conviction for certain crimes, or the finality of the measure applying a preventive measure for belonging to a Mafia-type association; furthermore, with Ruling no. 2/1999, it declared the unconstitutionality of a norm – analogous to the one before us – providing for the automatic expulsion from the register of accountants and commercial experts; with Ruling no. 268/2016, it declared the unconstitutionality of a regulation concerning military personnel which did not provide for the initiation of disciplinary proceedings for termination of service due to loss of rank, resulting from the accessory penalty of temporary prohibition from public office imposed by the criminal judge.” Lastly, the order refers to the more recent ruling of this Court no. 51 of 2024, which declared the unconstitutionality of Article 12, paragraph 5, of Legislative Decree no. 109 of February 23, 2006, concerning the "Regulation of disciplinary offenses of magistrates, related sanctions, and the procedure for their applicability, as well as amendment of the regulation regarding incompatibility, dismissal from service, and transfer to a different office of magistrates, pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 1, letter f), of Law no. 150 of July 25, 2005,” which provided for the automatic removal of a magistrate convicted "to a custodial penalty for a non-culpable offense of no less than one year whose execution has not been suspended, pursuant to Articles 163 and 164 of the Penal Code, or for which an order of suspension revocation pursuant to Article 168 of the same Code has been issued.”

The order then emphasizes, more specifically, that in the aforementioned rulings, this Court affirmed that, when assessing the constitutional legitimacy of provisions concerning disciplinary sanctions, two essential and interrelated principles must be taken into account: the general principle of proportionality of the disciplinary sanction to the gravity of the conduct, and the autonomy of the assessment in disciplinary proceedings compared to that of the criminal judge, without prejudice to the binding nature of the factual findings established in the criminal proceedings.

5.– In light of the aforementioned evolution of constitutional jurisprudence, the referring judge deems that Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law no. 56 of 1989 is not in line with the above principles, as it automatically links the professional’s expulsion to the circumstance that the professional has previously been finally convicted to a custodial penalty of no less than two years for any non-culpable offense, and, in so doing, "fundamentally precludes any assessment of the proportionality of the sanction” and "deprives” the disciplinary body "of any margin of appreciation regarding the sanction to be applied.”

6.– In the Court’s view, furthermore, "given the intervening ‘abolition’ of the institution of dismissal by right in the sphere of public employment and the expulsion by right for certain ‘protected’ professions, a rule that provides for such expulsion by right only for practicing psychologists appears contrary to the principle of equality.”

7.– P.P. A.d.P. and the Lazio Order of Psychologists, parties to the main proceedings, appeared in the proceedings, both insisting on the declaration of unconstitutionality of the challenged provision. These conclusions were reiterated by the Order in the brief filed shortly before the public hearing.

The President of the Council of Ministers did not intervene in the proceedings.

Considerations in Law

1.– The Court of Rome, Eleventh Civil Section, with the order mentioned in the heading (reg. ord. no. 32 of 2025), questions the constitutional legitimacy of Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law no. 56 of 1989, which, in regulating the sanctions applicable to members of the professional register of psychologists, establishes that "[e]xpulsion shall be pronounced by right when the registrant, by a final judgment, has been sentenced to a custodial penalty of no less than two years for a non-culpable offense.”

The issues raised by the referring judge are based on the assumption that the automatism of expulsion, as provided by the challenged provision, would be unreasonable and would introduce an unjustified disparity of treatment, thus conflicting with Article 3 of the Constitution on two grounds.

Firstly, there would be an intrinsic unreasonableness of the provision, as its application would be linked solely to the custodial penalty finally imposed in criminal proceedings. The challenged rule, in fact, would not allow the disciplinary body to graduate the sanctioning response in relation to the concrete gravity of the multiple factual situations capable of being encompassed under the abstract regulatory provision, equating situations characterized by different disvalue and leading to disproportionate results.

Secondly, an unreasonable disparity of treatment is alleged compared to other categories, both of public employees and professionals, for which similar automatisms have been eliminated by previous interventions of this Court. According to the referring judge, there is no justification for maintaining the aforementioned sanctioning automatism solely for psychologists, as their position is fully superimposable upon that of the other categories for which dismissal or expulsion by right have been deemed contrary to the Constitution.

2.– Preliminarily, it should be noted that the issues raised are relevant, as the resolution of the appeal proceedings initiated by P.P. A.d.P. could not disregard the application of the challenged provision. This is because the appeal challenges the resolution by which the Council of the Lazio Order of Psychologists imposed upon the said professional the disciplinary sanction of expulsion (i.e., the most severe among the measures contemplated by Article 13 of the relevant Disciplinary Regulation) solely on the basis that, pursuant to Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law no. 56 of 1989, it followed by right – and therefore, automatically – from the finalization of the judgment in which he had been sentenced to a custodial penalty of two years for a non-culpable offense.

3.– On the merits, the issue is well-founded.

Since 1988, numerous rulings of this Court have deemed unconstitutional, due to conflict with Article 3 of the Constitution, provisions involving the automatic dismissal of a public employee, or the automatic cancellation of professionals from their respective registers, as a consequence of their criminal conviction for certain offenses.

This consistent jurisprudential orientation began with Ruling no. 971 of 1988, concerning the automatic dismissal of State civil servants and local authority employees of the Sicilian Region following conviction for certain crimes, (and was subsequently followed by rulings: no. 40 of 1990, regarding the automatic dismissal of notaries; no. 158 of 1990, on the automatic expulsion of chartered accountants; no. 16 of 1991, concerning the automatic dismissal provided for regional employees; no. 197 of 1993, on the automatic dismissal of public administration employees; no. 363 of 1996, on the termination of continuous service due to loss of rank following the imposition of the accessory penalty of removal for deputy brigadiers and rank-and-file members of the Carabinieri Corps; no. 2 of 1999, regarding the automatic expulsion from the register of accountants and commercial experts).

More recently, Ruling no. 268 of 2016 declared the unconstitutionality of legislation providing for the termination of service of military personnel following the imposition, by the criminal judge, of the accessory penalty of temporary prohibition from public office, without providing for the initiation of disciplinary proceedings. Lastly, with Ruling no. 51 of 2024, this Court ruled again on the automatic application of the most severe disciplinary sanction in the event of a criminal conviction of the accused, declaring the unconstitutionality of the provision that provided for the automatic removal of a magistrate convicted to a custodial penalty for a non-culpable offense of no less than one year whose execution had not been suspended or for which a suspension revocation order had been issued.

As observed in this latter ruling, "[f]rom the jurisprudential framework outlined so far, two essential principles emerge which, for the purposes of the examination herein, must be correlated: a general requirement of proportionality of the disciplinary sanction to the gravity of the conduct […] and the autonomy of the assessment in disciplinary proceedings compared to that of the criminal judge, without prejudice to the binding nature of the factual findings established in the criminal proceedings” (point 3.3 of Considerations in Law).

It has been specified, in particular, that the principle of proportionality of the disciplinary sanction "can, normally, only be satisfied by an individualized assessment of the gravity of the offense, to which the sanctioning response must be calibrated […] so that it may be adequate to the concrete disvalue of the conduct.” Fixed sanctions are therefore contrary to this principle, unless they "do not prove manifestly disproportionate with respect to the entire range of behaviors attributable to the abstract offense sanctioned” (point 3.3.1 of Considerations in Law).

Regarding the autonomy of the discretionary assessment of the disciplinary body, this Court affirmed in the same ruling that it can "never be entirely set aside, by being simply substituted by that of the criminal judge,” especially "when it comes to applying definitive disciplinary sanctions such as dismissal or cancellation from the professional register,” because it is up to the disciplinary body "to assess not the (generic) gravity of the offense committed, but – more specifically – the significance of said offense with respect to the judgment of the continuing fitness of the interested party to carry out his duties or profession” (point 3.3.2 of Considerations in Law).

These principles have not been challenged by the rulings in which, always on the subject of the dismissal of public employees or the cancellation of professionals from their respective registers, this Court has declared the questions of constitutional legitimacy examined to be unfounded.

As observed in the cited Ruling no. 51 of 2024, Ruling no. 234 of 2015, which excluded the unconstitutionality of the provision prohibiting the rehabilitation of a notary already dismissed following conviction for a series of offenses, does not represent an exception, because it does not entail the automatic application of the most severe disciplinary sanction, but intervenes at a later stage, where, upstream, the disciplinary body has already exercised its discretionary power without any automatism and by calibrating the sanction to the specific case. The ruling highlighted, in fact, that "dismissal is ordered only by reason of a considered and discretionary assessment by the disciplinary body, challengeable in judicial proceedings, concerning the necessity of precluding the notary from further exercise of the profession, also in light of an assessment – made directly by the disciplinary body itself – of the gravity of the criminal acts for which he was convicted in criminal proceedings” (point 3.2.2 of Considerations in Law).

Ruling no. 112 of 2014, furthermore, declared unfounded the doubts of constitutional legitimacy raised, with reference to Articles 3 and 97 of the Constitution, against the regulation that, for members of the Public Security Administration ranks, contemplated automatic dismissal as a consequence of the application of a personal security measure by the criminal judge. In that case, however, as also observed in the cited Ruling no. 51 of 2024, "[w]hat was decisive in this Court’s assessment was […] the circumstance that the application of a security measure presupposes an individualized assessment, by the criminal judge, of the social dangerousness of the interested party, i.e. (pursuant to art. 203 of the Penal Code) the probability that he will commit new crimes; a probability deemed inherently incompatible with the special delicacy of the tasks of police personnel, whose essential function is precisely to prevent and repress crimes” (point 3.2.2 of Considerations in Law). The Court therefore considered the automatism justified in the face of the individualized assessment, by the criminal judge, of the social dangerousness of the interested party.

For completeness, it should also be noted that rulings no. 286 of 1999 and no. 197 of 2018 are not strictly relevant to the issue of the automatic effects of criminal conviction on disciplinary proceedings.

Specifically, the first ruling declared unfounded the question of constitutional legitimacy, raised with reference to Article 3 of the Constitution, of Article 29, first paragraph, of the Penal Code, "insofar as it states that conviction to imprisonment for a term of no less than five years implies the perpetual disqualification of the convict from public office.” On that occasion, this Court affirmed that the "termination of the employment relationship constitutes, in this case, only an indirect effect of the accessory penalty imposed in perpetuity” (point 3 of Considerations in Law). The challenged norm, in fact, does not provide for the automatic application of a disciplinary sanction, because the accessory penalty of perpetual disqualification from public office is imposed directly by the criminal judge, without any intervention by the disciplinary body.

With the second ruling, the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised with reference to Article 3 of the Constitution regarding Article 12, paragraph 5, of Legislative Decree no. 109 of 2006, insofar as it provides for the mandatory expulsion of a magistrate who has been convicted in disciplinary proceedings for the facts described in Article 3, paragraph 1, letter e), of the same legislative decree, were declared unfounded. In this case, the ruling excluded a violation of the principle of equality, as there was "no automatism linked to the occurrence of a conviction in criminal proceedings for certain offenses, but rather a different automatism inherent in the provision of a single fixed sanction (removal) for those deemed responsible by the disciplinary judge for a precise offense, also of a purely disciplinary nature,” resulting from a well-defined and certainly serious conduct, also considering the specific role that the magistrate holds in the legal system.

4.– The provision that is the subject of the present proceedings must, therefore, first and foremost, be examined in light of the aforementioned – and indisputable – principles of proportionality of the disciplinary sanction and centrality and autonomy of the disciplinary body's discretionary assessment, repeatedly affirmed by constitutional jurisprudence.

As regards the first principle, the provision for the automatic expulsion of the psychologist who has been finally convicted to a custodial penalty of no less than two years for a non-culpable offense prevents the graduation of the sanction in relation to the conduct held by the accused: in fact, it is "capable of being applied to too broad a range of cases, with respect to which it is easy to formulate hypotheses where it does not represent a proportionate measure with respect to the pursued objective” (Ruling no. 268 of 2016, point 6.4 of Considerations in Law). As observed, furthermore, in Ruling no. 51 of 2024, "[s]uch a mechanism structurally prevents this Court from carrying out the proportionality assessment of the sanctioning provision, which is required – according to the jurisprudence just reviewed – even when the legislator provides for a fixed sanction for a specific offense type […] For such a fixed sanction – as such ‘suspect’ of unconstitutionality […] – to pass the scrutiny of this Court unscathed, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the sanction of removal – the most severe among those provided for in the system of disciplinary offenses of magistrates – is proportionate to the entire range of typified behaviors. Behaviors that, however, the disciplinary offense here sanctioned does not indicate in any way, and which could indeed be the most diverse” (point 3.4.1 of Considerations in Law).

Nor, moreover, can it be argued that, in all conduct abstractly attributable to the challenged norm, an absolute presumption of unsuitability or moral unworthiness, much less of dangerousness of the interested party, exists, sufficient to justify the most severe disciplinary sanction.

Regarding the second principle, the rigidity of the challenged provision binds the disciplinary body to adopt sanctions automatically resulting from the criminal judge’s ruling, thus stripping it of the task of assessing the proportionality of said sanction to the crime committed, taking into account the peculiar perspective of the potential unsuitability of the professional to continue to carry out their activity, with a consequent impairment of the accused’s defense guarantees, which end up being devoid of any practical meaning.

Thus, the automatism provided for by the challenged provision can lead to disproportionate sanctioning responses with respect to the specific purposes of disciplinary liability, which do not correspond to the heterogeneity of the conduct attributable to the abstract hypothesis and the unreasonable removal from the Lazio Order of Psychologists of any power of appreciation on the continuing suitability of the convicted professional to carry out their professional activity.

To the violation of the reasonableness standard due to the failure to respect the principle of necessary proportionality, there is then added that of the principle of equality, as the challenged provision subjects psychologists to an unreasonably worse treatment – unjustified by their peculiar status – compared to State employees and employees of other public administrations, as well as compared to other professionals (such as notaries, chartered accountants, and commercial experts) regarding the procedural guarantees protecting the right of defense. Reference can also be made, on this point, to Ruling no. 268 of 2016, in which, concerning military personnel, it is affirmed that "such disparity of treatment finds no reasonable justification, considering that this Court has already had occasion to affirm that the peculiar status of the military, which does require compliance with strict codes of rectitude and honesty, cannot in itself constitute a valid reason to support a discrimination of military personnel against State civil servants under the aspect of procedural guarantees protecting the right of defense, which are also instrumental to the proper functioning of the military administration” (point 6.5 of Considerations in Law).

5.– In conclusion, the entirety of paragraph 3 of Article 26 of Law no. 56 of 1989 must be declared unconstitutional, with the consequent re-expansion of the general discipline applicable to the disciplinary offense committed by the psychologist and the return to the Council of the Lazio Order of Psychologists of the possibility to apply – according to its discretionary assessment – one of the sanctions provided for by Article 26, paragraph 1, of the same law, including, naturally, expulsion itself, if it deems that the crime for which a final conviction has been issued is indeed indicative of the radical unsuitability of the accused professional to continue to perform his duties.

for these reasons

THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

declares the unconstitutionality of Article 26, paragraph 3, of Law of February 18, 1989, no. 56 (Regulation of the Psychology Profession).

Decided in Rome, at the seat of the Constitutional Court, Palazzo della Consulta, on September 24, 2025.

Signed:

Giovanni AMOROSO, President

Maria Alessandra SANDULLI, Rapporteur

Filed with the Registry on October 17, 2025

The anonymized version conforms textually to the original