The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation received a response from the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative regarding the “anti-missionary” amendments regarding the indication by a religious organization of its full name

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation received a response from the plenipotentiary representative of the president to the complaint of Sergei Chugunov, drawn up regarding the "anti-missionary" amendments on the indication of a religious organization of its full name.

On July 17, 2020, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation received a response from the plenipotentiary representative of the President to the complaint of representatives of the Church of Evangelical Christians (Pentecostals) “Word of Life” (Dolgoprudny). The question that lawyer Sergey Chugunov raised before the Constitutional Court in early July 2020 was related to anti-missionary” amendments from the Yarovaya-Ozerov package. According to S. Chugunov, “the norm of paragraph 8 of Art. 8 of the Federal Law "On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations" is not formulated clearly enough, namely: the norm does not specify in which specific place a religious organization is obliged to post information indicating its full name . The vagueness of the wording, he believes, "allows law enforcers to arbitrarily interpret it and arbitrarily make demands on the placement of the names of religious organizations in the course of their activities . "

In his response to the lawyer's complaint, the presidential plenipotentiary explains that “ from the literal meaning of paragraph 8 of Art. 8 of the Federal Law, indeed, it does not clearly follow where exactly information with the official name of [a religious organization] should be placed”, in addition, “ a preliminary analysis of judicial practice also indicates a lack of uniformity on this issue .” He points to "at least two options for understanding this norm", in which he sees both "positive regulatory aspects" and "certain risks for the public interest."

Thus, placing information about a religious organization on the facade of an apartment building or in front of the entrance to the territory of a land plot, that is, “in a place accessible to the widest range of people”, on the one hand, “helps protect the constitutional right to disseminate religious beliefs”, but, on the other hand, "may provoke illegal actions on the part of individual citizens who do not support the religious beliefs of such an organization."

At the same time, another option - “placement of an information plate only on the inside of the door or on the front door of a building fenced with a fence” , - according to the plenipotentiary representative of the president, can “violate the rights of members of the organization - for example, make it difficult for them to find the building on their first visit” and besides “ may create difficulties for effective oversight by public authorities, including in the field of countering extremism” .

Lawyer Sergei Chugunov is preparing his objections to the recall.

Later, the complaint received responses from the plenipotentiaries of the State Duma and the Federation Council to the Constitutional Court, Marina Bespalova and Andrey Klishas. In both cases, the authors of the comments did not see any violation of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in the challenged norm.

Sources

• A response was received from the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on our complaint on the issue of where a religious organization should indicate its name ... // Blog of lawyer Sergei Chugunov. 2020. July 27.
• Preparations are underway for consideration of our complaint by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation... // There. August 6th
• We received another response to our complaint filed with the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation ... // There. 12th of August.