Supreme Court, 30 June 2020, decision no. 23891 (Italy)

With this decision, the Italian Supreme Court rejected the use of stereotypes on gay men and/or homosexuality for denying the refugee status to asylum claimants who fear persecution on sexual orientation grounds. According to the Supreme Court, a judge cannot resort to personal opinions to evaluate a SOGI claim but needs to use neutral criteria (e.g. plausibility and coherence of the claim) to assess the fear of persecution. Therefore, arguments like ‘the lack of a painful process of self-discover’ of one’s SOGI or ‘the lack of same-sex sexual encounters’ in Italy cannot be used to assess the asylum requests of SOGI claimants.