Right to vote for Danish Parliament

Case no. 159/2017
Judgment delivered on 18 January 2018

A, B, C and D
(all represented by Attorney Christian Dahlager)
vs.
The Danish Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Interior
(Attorney Sune Fugleholm)
Intervener for the Appellants:
The Danish Institute for Human Rights

Not in contravention of the Constitution or Denmark's international obligations to strip people who have been deprived of their legal capacity under the Guardianship Act of their right to vote for Danish Parliament

The issue in this case concerned, in particular, whether it was in contravention of Section 29 of the Danish Constitution, the European Human Rights Convention or the UN Disability Convention that A, B, C and D (the Appellants) were stripped of their right to vote for the Danish Parliament in 2015 because they had been deprived of their legal capacity under Section 6 of the Danish Guardianship Act. If this was found to be the case, the Supreme Court was also to consider the issue of compensation.

According to Section 29 of the Constitution, people who have been declared incapable of conducting their own affairs do not have the right to vote for Parliament. The Supreme Court found that people who have been deprived of their legal capacity under Section 6 of the Guardianship Act must be regarded as having been declared incapable of conducting their own affairs within the meaning of the Constitution and are thus not entitled to vote for Parliament. Section 1 of the Danish Act on Parliamentary Elections has been worded to reflect this. Accordingly, regardless of what follows from Denmark’s international obligations, the Appellants’ claim that they were entitled to vote for the 2015 parliamentary election was not upheld.

Further, the Supreme Court did not find any basis for concluding that the provision in Section 29 of the Constitution is in contravention of the European Human Rights Convention or the UN Disability Convention. For this reason alone, the Appellants had no right to compensation.

The High Court had reached the same conclusion.