Activist from Kaliningrad demands that the court repeal the law banning Navalny's supporters from running for the State Duma
Ivan Luzin stated in the lawsuit that the law had vague and slippery requirements for a citizen. According to Luzin, the law restricts freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly. The activist was able to file a lawsuit only a year later, because he challenged the illegality of the removal from the elections in the courts all this time.
In early June 2021, Vladimir Putin signed a law banning those involved in extremist and terrorist organizations from being elected to the State Duma. Immediately after the president signed the decree, the court recognized Navalny's headquarters* and the Anti-Corruption Foundation* as extremist.
Luzin was a member of Navalny's headquarters* in Kaliningrad; he ran for the State Duma as an independent candidate in the summer of 2021. The local election committee registered him as a candidate at the end of June, but a month later, he was removed from the elections under the new law due to his activities at the headquarters*.
Luzin is not the only one who was denied registration for elections under the new law. In the summer of the same year, the Pskov election committee removed Lev Shlosberg and Nikolai Kuzmin, the Yabloko Party deputies, from the elections to the regional assembly because of their participation in an uncoordinated rally in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23.
In June of this year, politicians filed a lawsuit against the ban on participating in elections to the Constitutional Court. They believe that the law’s provisions violate the Constitution’s provisions on pluralism, freedom of thought and speech, prohibition of discrimination, and other articles. According to Senator Andrei Klishas, it is first necessary to recognize a candidate as involved in extremism in order to restrict them. But there were no such court decisions regarding the deputies from Pskov.