A ruling set to concretely change the working lives of thousands of teachers and school sector employees. With decision no. 125 of 14 July 2026, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional a provision that, in its rigidity, risked leaving certain workers in a paradoxical situation: without a salary and without a pension. A legal vacuum that the judges of the Consulta deemed unacceptable, both on constitutional grounds and on the basis of basic legislative reasonableness.
The Root of the Problem: A Threshold That Failed to Keep Pace
To understand the significance of the decision, one must begin with the provision that was declared unconstitutional. Article 509, paragraph 3, of Legislative Decree no. 297 of 1994 — the so-called Testo Unico della scuola (Consolidated Law on Schools) — provided that school staff who had not yet met the requirements for an old-age pension could be retained in service, but in no case beyond the age of 70.
In the abstract, the mechanism had its own internal logic: to guarantee workers sufficient time to accrue the necessary pension entitlements. The problem is that the 70-year threshold remained fixed, while the Italian pension system continued to evolve. Periodic adjustments to the statutory retirement age in line with life expectancy progressively raised the requirements for accessing an old-age pension, making it impossible in some cases to reach that milestone within the time limit set by education law.
The result? Workers compelled to leave service before having accrued their pension entitlement, facing a period — in some cases a significant one — during which they found themselves without either earned income or pension benefits.
The Concrete Case That Gave Rise to the Ruling
Landmark rulings often originate from individual circumstances. In this case too, behind the Constitutional Court's decision lies the story of an employee of the Ministry of Education and Merit, enrolled in the contributory pension system, who had been placed on retirement despite not yet having met the requirements for an old-age pension. The worker had requested permission to continue her employment until the age of 71, the age required to accrue pension entitlement under the pension legislation in force at the time.
The administration rejected the request. The matter came first before the Tribunal of Lecce, then — by means of the preliminary reference mechanism provided for under Article 363-bis of the Code of Civil Procedure — before the Court of Cassation, and ultimately before the Constitutional Court, which definitively resolved the issue.
What the Court Ruled and Why It Matters
The Consulta did not abolish the institution of retention in service, which remains a valid and necessary instrument. Rather, it removed the rigid and immutable 70-year age limit, which had become incompatible with a pension system that no longer guarantees access to an old-age pension by that age for all workers. The ruling establishes that where a worker has not yet accrued the requirements for an old-age pension, the statutory retirement threshold must be interpreted and applied in a manner consistent with the actual pension entitlement requirements in force — preventing the emergence of that unacceptable gap between the end of employment and the commencement of pension benefits.