The Constitutional Court on Tuesday ruled as unconstitutional a law that bans Russians who hold residence permits in other countries from working in Russian elections.
The law was contested by Andrei Malitsky, a Moscow resident who was dismissed from a district elections committee after he got a residence permit in Lithuania, the court's web site said.
The Constitutional Court said such bans "distort the essence" of the right to participate in state affairs and "cast unfair doubt on the loyalty" of Russian citizens.
The ruling concerns two clauses of Article 29 of the federal law on elections rights, which went into effect in 2002.
Malitsky was member of the Preobrazhensky district elections committee from December 2006 to June 2009.
Election laws ban people with dual citizenship from running for office. In 2008, Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet-era dissident, did not make it onto the presidential ballot because he holds a British passport in addition to a Russian one.