Constitutional Review of the ITE Law Safety Clause: MK 260/PUU-XXIV/2026

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia decided case 260/PUU-XXIV/2026 on 30 July 2026, a material review of Article 4(e) of Law 11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions, as last amended by Law 1/2024, against the 1945 Constitution. The petitioner, Ferdinandus Klau, questioned the phrase "memberi rasa aman", the statutory objective of providing a sense of security, and asked the Court to read the provision as obliging social media platform operators to confirm that every user holds a valid and legitimate identity. The Court did not examine that claim on its merits, resolving the case instead on the form of the petition.

Legal Reasoning

The Court accepted that the petition had been arranged in accordance with the systematics required of a petition for review, setting out the Court's authority, the petitioner's legal standing, the grounds of the petition, and the relief sought. Formal sufficiency, it said, is not assessed on structure alone. The Court also weighs the accuracy and clarity of the substance presented in each part of that structure, and the correspondence between the grounds of a petition and the relief it requests.

That approach was grounded in two provisions. Article 51(3)(b) of the Constitutional Court Law obliges a petitioner to explain clearly how the material content of the article or part of a statute under review is considered contrary to the 1945 Constitution. Article 68 of Constitutional Court Regulation 7/2025 then lists grounds on which the Court may declare a petition unclear, among them a mismatch between the arguments made in the grounds and the relief requested, an argument appearing in the relief but absent from the grounds or the reverse, and requests within the relief that contradict one another while offering no alternative.

Two findings followed from that examination. The grounds of the petition argued that the phrase "memberi rasa aman" in Article 4(e) of Law 11/2008 was unclear, and on that basis sought a reading that would expressly require social media platform operators to apply a valid identity verification system for their users. The relief sought, however, asked the Court to declare Article 4(e) contrary to the 1945 Constitution and without binding legal force unless interpreted to require operators to ensure that every user employs a legitimate real identity as a precondition for activity on social media, without connecting that request back to the phrase the grounds had questioned. The Court found this left unclear what the petitioner actually sought: a new meaning for the phrase, a declaration that the phrase is unconstitutional, or the annulment of the provision as a whole subject to a conditional interpretation. The arguments advanced in the grounds, it held, stood in contradiction (contradictio in terminis) with the matters submitted for decision.

The second finding concerned the wording of the relief itself. Item two of the relief appended to the requested interpretation the words "as guaranteed in Article 28D(1) in conjunction with Article 28G(1) of the 1945 Constitution". The Court measured that formulation against Article 51A(5)(b) and (c) of the Constitutional Court Law, under which the relief in a material review asks the Court to declare that the material content of the article or part of the statute is contrary to the 1945 Constitution and that it has no binding legal force. Against that standard the Court held the appended wording an unusual formulation of relief, not the form contemplated by Article 51A(5)(b) and (c) or by Article 68 of Regulation 7/2025.

Taken together, the Court said the lack of clarity and consistency between the reasons given and the matters requested, combined with the unusual formulation of the relief, left no doubt in declaring the petition unclear or obscure (obscuur).

The Ruling

The Court's conclusions were that it had authority to adjudicate the petition, that the petition was unclear or obscure, and that the petition would not be considered further; other matters raised were left unaddressed for want of relevance. The operative order reads: "Menyatakan permohonan Pemohon tidak dapat diterima" — the petition is declared inadmissible. The decision was taken in a judges' deliberative session on 27 July 2026 by nine constitutional justices, with Suhartoyo as presiding justice, and pronounced in an open plenary session on 30 July 2026, attended by the petitioner and by representatives of the House of Representatives and of the President.

Because the case was resolved on the form of the petition, Article 4(e) of Law 11/2008 was not reviewed on its substance and remains in force in its existing terms. Whether the statutory objective of providing a sense of security carries an obligation for platform operators to verify user identity was not settled by this decision.

Read the full decision in the official record.

Methodology: This memo summarises the official decision text and is not legal advice; report corrections to contact@crpg.id.

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Correction (27 September 2026): this post was checked against the official text of decision 260/PUU-XXIV/2026 and corrected. Changes: 1 minor correction of detail. Report errors to contact@crpg.id.