Croatia's Supreme Court Rules That Free Speech Doesn't Cover Calling Rainbow Families 'Fake'

Six years after a Croatian conservative group launched a petition calling same-sex families “fake,” “unnatural” and “perverse,” the country’s Supreme Court has closed the door on its last attempt to have the discrimination finding against it overturned.

The decision, dated September 2 and reported on September 24, rejected a request for revision from Vigilare, the conservative association led by Vice John Batarelo. The case was brought by Dugine obitelji (Rainbow Families), the Croatian organisation that represents LGBTIQ+ parents and their children. Croatian outlets including HRT, Telegram, Dnevnik.hr and the feminist portal Libela all covered the decision.

How it started: a documentary about one family

In 2020, Croatian public broadcaster HRT aired Janina dugina obitelj (Janina’s Rainbow Family), a documentary about a same-sex family. Vigilare answered with a petition titled “Stop homo-propaganda on state television. Stop fake rainbows, protect children and family!” It described families like the one in the film as fake, unnatural and perverse, and claimed that growing up in them harms children and destabilises society.

Dugine obitelji sued under Croatia’s anti-discrimination law. The case went back and forth through the courts, and by the end of 2021 there was a final finding that the campaign amounted to discrimination, incitement to discrimination and harassment of LGBTIQ+ people and their families. The disputed content was ordered taken down, and Vigilare was barred from publishing it again. Vigilare then asked the Supreme Court for an extraordinary review. That request has now been rejected.

What the court said about speech

The court’s reasoning is worth reading closely. As reported by Novi list and Libela, the Supreme Court accepted that freedom of thought and expression is a fundamental right, but said it is not absolute. In its words, freedom of expression “cannot serve intolerance, exclusivity, fear-mongering, repulsion and discrimination.”

The judges made several points that go beyond this one petition:

• Opinions still need facts behind them. Value judgments can be protected speech, but they need some factual basis. The court found Vigilare offered no scientific, factual or legal support for its claim that same-sex families harm children.
• Religion isn’t a licence to discriminate. Holding a particular religious or moral view does not give anyone the right to discriminate against others.
• Democracies don’t have to tolerate intolerance. According to Libela, the court said democratic societies have no duty to tolerate intolerance and must protect minority and vulnerable groups.
• Children are harmed too. The court stressed that calling a family “unnatural” or “deviant” sends a humiliating message to the children growing up in it.

”Where discussion ends and discrimination begins”

Daniel Martinović, president of Dugine obitelji, said the ruling does not ban debate. Instead, he told reporters, it “clearly determines where discussion ends and discrimination begins.” Libela quoted him more fully: “There is a major difference between criticizing policy and portraying an entire group as deviant, unnatural, or dangerous to children. When you publicly tell someone their family is unnatural or their parents are strange, you’re not conducting abstract political debate. You’re speaking about a real child and their family.”

Vigilare doesn’t see it that way. In a statement reported by HRT and tportal on September 25, the group called the ruling “judicial activism.” It said Croatian courts “change the meaning of constitutional provisions” when same-sex couples are involved, and that the legal path is “only halfway through.” Vigilare promised to keep fighting “through all legally permissible means,” without saying which court it would try next.

Not the only case

This is at least the third conservative campaign against LGBTIQ+ families that Croatian courts have found discriminatory in recent years. According to Libela, Vigilare started a second petition in late 2022, “Protect children from same-sex adoption,” which the Zagreb County Court found discriminatory in a judgment that became final in March 2023. HRT reports that in May 2026 a court also found discrimination in a campaign by the Ordo Iuris Foundation for Legal Culture, and ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map entry for Croatia records a Zagreb County Court order to remove that foundation’s petition as discriminatory towards LGBTI families.

These cases matter because of how Croatia got its family rights. In the 2013 referendum, roughly two-thirds of voters backed defining marriage in the constitution as a union of a man and a woman. The Life Partnership Act followed in 2014. Since then, most gains for same-sex families have come through the courts rather than parliament. In 2020 the Constitutional Court ruled that excluding same-sex couples from foster care was unconstitutional, and in 2022 the High Administrative Court made final a ruling that opened adoption to same-sex couples. We traced that history in our state of LGBTQ+ rights in Croatia explainer earlier this year.

Groups like Vigilare have tried to win in public opinion what they lost in court, often by targeting the families themselves. This ruling says that is a line they can’t cross. Families can still be debated as a policy question. Families as people, including their children, can’t be made targets.

Why the rest of the region should notice

Croatia is an EU member with a working anti-discrimination law and a record of enforcing it. Its neighbours are not all there yet. In Serbia, same-sex couples are still waiting for any legal recognition, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, online hate speech erupted ahead of this year’s Pride march in Sarajevo. What is still rare in the region is a top court saying clearly, in writing, that “freedom of speech” doesn’t cover campaigns like Vigilare’s.

Ruling against a petition does not end the hostility behind it, and Vigilare has made clear it isn’t giving up. But for parents in Zagreb, Split or Rijeka raising kids in rainbow families, the country’s highest ordinary court has now said plainly that their families are not a legitimate target.