The court ordered to change the decision that allowed to receive an identity document with a diacritical mark

The District Court of Vilnius City changed the previous decision and ordered the Civil Registry Department of the Vilnius District Municipality Administration to change the applicant’s name and surname in personal identification documents using the letter “w”, but not using the Polish hard letter “l” with a diacritical hyphen.

As reported by the prosecutor’s office, the court made such a decision after examining a civil case in which the process was renewed at the initiative of the General Prosecutor’s Office in defense of the public interest.

The court, having evaluated the legal regulation regarding the spelling of the name in documents and records of civil status acts using non-Lithuanian characters, decided that only the letters of the Latin alphabet without diacritical marks – “x”, “q” and “w” are allowed.

According to the report, the court agreed with the position of the prosecutor’s office that the court decision of June 1, 2022, which satisfied the person’s request to use a hard “l” in the last name, should be evaluated as a “clear error in the application of the legal norm.”

The district court of the city of Vilnius had adopted a decision by which the Civil Registry Department of the Vilnius District Municipality Administration was obliged to change the letter “l” in the record of the civil status act by replacing the letter “l” of the Latin alphabet with a diacritical mark.

Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė, defending the public interest, appealed to the court, asking to resume the proceedings in this civil case and to make another decision, because the law only allows names to be written in the Latin alphabet without diacritics.

This court decision can be appealed within 30 days.