Macatė v. Lithuania: may public authorities and private actors discriminate against the content of a message?

ENOn 23 January 2023, in Macatė v. Lithuania, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held by 17 votes to 0 that restrictions on a book of six fairy tales for children, two of which included same-sex couples, violated Article 10. Indeed, the Grand Chamber found that measures ‘limit[ing] children’s access to information depicting same-sex relationships as essentially equivalent to different-sex relationships, [and] labelling such information as harmful ... did not pursue a legitimate aim ... ’2 This was an unusually strong decision, in that the ECtHR almost always finds that the respondent government’s measures pursued a legitimate aim of one kind or another, and that the proportionality of those measures must be considered. After finding a violation of Article 10, the ECtHR ruled by 12 votes to 5 ‘that there is no need to examine separately the applicant’s complaint [of discrimination] under Article 14 ... taken in conjunction with Article 10’. 3 I will argue below that the five dissenting judges were right to examine the complaint and find a violation of Article 14 (combined with Article 10). [...].