On May 28, 2025, the Constitutional Court of Georgia granted Public Defender’s constitutional lawsuit No. 1606, which challenged the regulation approved by Decree No. 445 of July 17, 2020, according to which the residential and non-residential premises in state ownership on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense of Georgia was not allowed to be transferred to a person who did not have Georgian citizenship.

According to the Public Defender, the disputed norm was discriminatory in nature, since, unlike Georgian citizens, it excluded the transfer of state-owned land to a person who did not have Georgian citizenship, even if the person was the heir of the legal owner of the land, the person had proved the actual ownership of the land and the documentation required for the transfer of the land had been submitted to the Ministry. According to the Public Defender, such differentiated treatment had no reasonable explanation.

In the case under consideration, the Constitutional Court of Georgia compared a person who did not have Georgian citizenship, whose legator lawfully owned the property on the balance sheet of the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, and who had failed to register the ownership of the said land during his lifetime, and a citizen of Georgia, whose legator lawfully owned the said property and who had also failed to register its ownership during his lifetime. The Constitutional Court, in relation to the given legal relationship, considered the comparable persons to be essentially equal subjects. The Constitutional Court explained that in a certain legal relationship the legal status of a citizen of Georgia differed from the status of a foreigner, however, in the context of the legal relationship identified in the case under consideration, citizenship did not change the nature of the legal interest of the heirs.

According to the Constitutional Court, in the given case, different treatment of essentially equal persons could not be justified by the interest of saving limited state resources. In order to justify the differentiation, it was necessary to substantiate not only that the resources were insufficient for everyone, but also to demonstrate the rationality of the differentiation itself. The Court did not consider the disputed regulation to be a mechanism encouraging citizens to engage in the field of defense and security either. In particular, according to the Constitutional Court, the transfer of the land to the heir was made without any condition of succession. Accordingly, the latter’s acquisition of the property did not constitute a guarantee of his involvement in the field of defense or in any way increased such expectations. Accordingly, the Constitutional Court considered the disputed norm to be discriminatory and declared it unconstitutional in relation to paragraph 1 of Article 11, of the Constitution of Georgia.

Constitutional Court’s ruling is available at:

https://constcourt.ge/ka/judicial-acts?legal=17972