The Constitutional Court has granted definitive judicial support to single-parent families. The entire Court of Guarantees declared unconstitutional the legal provisions which, in practice, have for years refused these families to be able to extend their leave for the birth of a child and benefit not only from 16 weeks but also from the duration of leave which would have corresponded. to the other parent. The court accepted a question of unconstitutionality raised by Catalan judges against the articles of the Workers’ Statute which regulate these permits and, in practice, obliges Social Security to recognize up to 26 weeks of leave for single-parent families.
Official data shows that there are nearly two million single-parent families in Spain, mostly made up of women who raise their children alone. Single-parent families plunged into uncertainty for months due to contradictory messages emanating from different jurisdictions: the Constitutional Court has just openly contradicted the criteria of the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court, which denied this right. But another department of the Supreme Court, that of litigation, was recognized in terms similar to those of civil servants.
The Constitutional Court established that there is discrimination against single-parent families after studying the allegations of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia. The judges decided to refer the matter to the Guarantees Court after analyzing the case of a woman who went to Social Security in 2021 to request extended leave to 16 weeks because she was raising her newborn daughter alone. A court in Barcelona agreed with him and went so far as to double this permit, but the TSJ decided to entrust it to the Constitutional Court when it understood that “discriminatory treatment” could be applied to single-parent families.
The Guarantees Court had been analyzing this case for months, not on this question of unconstitutionality but also on dozens of appeals from women whose requests failed before the fourth chamber of the Supreme Court. The bearer of this resource which paves the way for the rest, María Luisa Segoviano, is committed to declaring the unconstitutionality of the precept and establishing a bridge that would recognize, in practice, 26 weeks of leave for single-parent families until what the legislator analyzes the standard.
In this debate, according to constitutional sources, the best interests of the child and the conclusion that a child born in a single-parent family benefits from less exclusive custody time were taken into account. A debate around the Status of Workers and the Social Security Law in which the Constitutional Court concluded that the legislator had not provided any alternative for the single-parent family: “It is an omission without justification,” says he.
The omission of any mechanism allowing the situation of children born in all types of families to be assimilated introduces “a difference in treatment due to birth between boys and girls born in single-parent and two-parent families, which does not exceed the canon of reasonableness.” and proportionality, to the point of completely ignoring the negative consequences that such a measure produces on boys and girls born into single-parent families.
Contradictory sentences
Until now, the various complaints from single-parent families were addressed to the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court, which studies citizens’ conflicts with Social Security regarding benefits. The criterion, for more than a year, has been to refuse that they have the right to increase or double their authorization because the magistrates understand that this is something that, in any case, the legislator must establish by a legal change and not by a room of the Supreme Court with a sudden judgment.
Another chamber of the Supreme Court recently ruled in the opposite direction. This was that of contentious and administrative matters, which studies, among other things, conflicts between civil servants and the administration on issues such as allowances and birth permits. This court understood that the legislation discriminated against children born into single-parent families and recognized their right to extend their leave up to 26 weeks, even if the effects of this decision only affect civil servants. The judgment just handed down by the Constitutional Court covers the rest of single-parent families who are not made up of public sector workers.
