SECOND SECTION
CASE OF RUTKAUSKAS v. LITHUANIA
(Application no. 15816/20)
 
 
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT
 
STRASBOURG
26 August 2025
 
This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Rutkauskas v. Lithuania,
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:
 Tim Eicke, President,
 Jovan Ilievski,
 Gediminas Sagatys, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 15816/20) against the Republic of Lithuania lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 25 March 2020 by a Lithuanian national, Mr Erikas Rutkauskas (“the applicant”), who was born in 1992, lives in Pakriauniai and was represented by Mr S.H. Brady Heath, a lawyer practising in London;
the decision to give notice of the application to the Lithuanian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent at the time, Ms K. Bubnytė-Širmenė;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 1 July 2025,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The applicant is a Jehovah’s Witness and religious minister. Having been called on under the Law on Conscription to perform military service in Lithuania, he refused on the grounds of his religious beliefs and conscience. His request to perform civilian service instead was not answered by the military authorities, which on 7 September 2015 also decided not to exempt the applicant from initial mandatory military service. The applicant challenged their decisions in the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, which on 31 October 2017 dismissed the applicant’s appeal. 2. The applicant then lodged an appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, asking the latter to suspend the case and to refer a question to the Constitutional Court on whether the State’s failure to include an exemption in the Law on Conscription from both mandatory military service and alternative national defence service for conscientious objectors breached the right to freedom of religion. The applicant also stated that the military authorities had not assessed his request to perform alternative civilian service, and that fact had been overlooked by the first instance court. 3. By a final ruling of 16 October 2019 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the impugned decisions. It referred to the Constitutional Court’s ruling of 4 July 2017 and the Supreme Administrative Court’s prior ruling of 10 April 2019 (see Teliatnikov v. Lithuania, no. 51914/19, §§ 28-30, 7 June 2022) and held that the constitutional duty of a citizen to perform mandatory military service or alternative national defence service applied both to ministers of churches and religious organisations that were considered traditional in Lithuania, and also to ministers of non-traditional religious communities and associations. There was thus a legal basis for holding that the military authorities’ decision not to release the applicant from mandatory military service was lawful. Furthermore, the questions related to the applicant’s status as subject to military conscription, such as whether he was medically fit to perform such service, or which type of service – military or alternative national defence service – should apply to him, or what the conditions of such service should be, were not the subject matter of the case. 4. The applicant complained under Article 9 of the Convention that despite his genuinely held religious beliefs and his conscience, he was denied the right to refuse military service. Even though he had never denied his civic obligations, no alternative civilian service had been provided for by Lithuanian law.

Article of the Convention at issue: Article 9
Outcome: violation