Tatjana Slivenko, who is married to former Soviet officer Nikolaj Slivenko, and her daughter Karina were expelled from Latvia in 1999 under terms of the 1994 Latvian-Russian treaty on the withdrawal of Russian troops from the newly-independent country.
All three now live in the Russian city of Kursk.
But the human rights court elected to hear only three of the 11 complaints filed against Latvia, said Roderick Liddell, with the Strasbourg-based court.
While Russia sees the Slovenko glass as half full, to Latvia it is half empty.
"A little too much has been made of [the Slovenko case] by both Latvia and Russia," said Nils Muiznieks, director of the Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies.
The Latvian daily newspaper Diena is taking the court's decision as a de facto recognition of Soviet occupation, he said, but Russia sees the preliminary judgment as proof of Latvia's mistreatment of ethnic Russians.
But in the end, the court's decision is merely which parts of the case will be heard - a far cry from a guaranteed win or loss for either side. The case, which will be heard sometime in the next year, will not be open for appeal.
The court has decided to hear the three complaints from Tatjana and Karina Slivenko under Article 5 of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights - the right to liberty and security - Article 8 - the right to respect for private and family life and home - and Article 14 - prohibition of discrimination.
Latvia maintains it followed all international regulations during the Slovenkos' expulsion process.
All Russian military were required to leave, said Kristine Malinovska, the representative for the Cabinet of Ministers at international human rights organizations, because of the agreement between Latvia and Russia regarding the removal of troops.
"The expulsion was in compliance with the convention," she said. "It also provides for the possibility to detain a person before they are forcibly expelled from Latvia. We believe there has been no violation."
The court threw out all of the complaints relating to Nikolaj Slivenko and the rest of Tatjana's and Karina's on the grounds they had not exhausted domestic remedies, that they missed deadlines, that the claims could not be substantiated, or that the accusations were not covered by the convention.
According to Liddell, the court had some concrete information to take into its preliminary decision.
Tatjana Slivenko was born in 1959 in Estonia before moving to Latvia when she was one month old. She met her future husband, Nikolaj, there after he transferred to the Baltic state in 1977 as a Soviet military officer. They married in 1980 and Karina was born in Latvia in 1981.
After independence in 1991, Tatjana, her parents and Karina were entered into the register of Latvian residents as "ex-U.S.S.R. citizens."
There were no problems until 1994, when Nikolaj Slivenko, still a Russian citizen, retired from the army and applied for a temporary residency permit in Latvia.
His application was refused and immigration authorities annulled Tatjana and Karina Slivenko's status in the residents' register.
A deportation order was issued in 1996 - the same year Nikolaj Slivenko returned to Russia - and in 1998 the mother and daughter were detained in a center for illegal immigrants. During this time, Karina Slivenko completed her secondary schooling in Latvia.
Tatjana and Karina reunited with Nikolaj Slivenko in Russia in July 1999 and adopted Russian citizenship in 2001.
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