In European Commission v. Hungary, (CJEU, April 21, 2026), the Court of Justice of the European Union held that Hungary's Law on the Protection of Children and other provisions of Hungarian law adopted in 2021 violate the Treaty on European Union and other EU rules. Hungary's Law on the Protection of Children provides in part:
‘In order to safeguard the objectives set out in this Law and to ensure the protection of children’s rights, making the following available to persons under the age of 18 shall be prohibited: pornography, as well as content that depicts sexuality for its own purposes, or that promotes or portrays deviation from the self-identity corresponding to the sex assigned at birth, gender reassignment, or homosexuality.’
The European Commission brought an action against Hungary challenging its 2021 enactments. In a 621-paragraph opinion, the Court of Justice said in part:
446... [T]he fact that a legislative act ... states, according to its title, that it is laying down ‘stricter measures in respect of persons convicted of paedophilia’, while providing that minors must be protected from portrayals of deviation from ... the sex assigned at birth... or of homosexuality, is also such as to amplify the offensive and stigmatising effect of the provisions ..., or even to encourage the development of hateful conduct towards non-cisgender or non-heterosexual persons, given that such persons could thereby be associated with persons convicted of paedophilia....
487 ... [T]he result of the provisions at issue is the stigmatisation and marginalisation of non-cisgender persons – including transgender persons – or non-heterosexual persons, who constitute a minority group of persons, solely on the basis of their gender identity or their sexual orientation.
488 ... Hungary has, in a binding legal act, made an association between the fact of not being cisgender or not being heterosexual, on the one hand, and being convicted of paedophilia, on the other. Such an association, through its offensive and stigmatising effect – an association which is, moreover, such as to encourage the development of hateful conduct towards such persons – violates the human dignity of those persons, for the purposes of Article 1 of the Charter.
489 ... [T]hat association and that stigmatisation entail a group of persons forming an integral part of a society in which pluralism prevails being treated as a threat to that society meriting special legal treatment, which results in such persons’ social ‘invisibility’ being established, maintained, or reinforced, in breach of Article 1 of the Charter....
The Court has also issued a press release and a video explaining the decision. Politico reports on the decision. [Thanks to Scott Mange for the lead.]
