(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s Supreme Court dismissed a ruling intended to limit the scope of a judicial overhaul passed by Congress, easing concerns of a standoff with President Claudia Sheinbaum that risked setting off a constitutional crisis.
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The decision to reject the case was approved unanimously after the top court failed to reach the majority needed to pass the ruling.
The proposal from Justice Juan Luis González Alcántara sought to uphold the legality of popular elections for Supreme Court members, one of the key aims of the judicial overhaul. But the ruling also sought to declare unconstitutional the speedy election of the country’s federal judges, many of whom are set to face a vote next year.
Written in response to several challenges to the overhaul, the ruling would have limited the scope of the reform approved by lawmakers in September. The court needed eight votes to approve the ruling, but only seven of the eleven Supreme Court justices considered the challenges supporting González Alcántara’s proposal to be valid.
The justices who voted against approving the proposal argued that discussing reforms or additions to the Constitution is not within the scope of the top court.
Justice Yasmín Esquivel said that approving González Alcántara’s proposal would only increase the confrontation between the judicial and legislative branches. “It would inevitably lead us to the rupture of the balance that must exist between judicial moderation and respect for the division of powers. History will judge us, let us not measure forces, let us be responsible.”
“González Alcántara’s proposal was intended to negotiate, to find a middle ground, but in the face of the government’s refusal, the Supreme Court made a rational calculation and preferred to make a decision that shuts the possibility of a constitutional crisis,” said Juan Carlos Villarreal, a political science professor at the Autonomous University of Mexico State.
Sheinbaum has accused González Alcántara and his colleagues of trying to rewrite laws passed by Congress, thereby violating the will of the Mexican people, which gave her party strong majorities in both chambers. She also said she had a plan ready in case the proposal was passed.
“Today the court defeated itself, due to an incorrect, biased action, and today the country is saved, the process continues, and the judges will be elected,” said Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña after the decision.
The overhaul was championed by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and passed during his last month in office. Its critics — including the US government and foreign investors — argue that electing judges will put Mexican democracy at risk by damaging judicial independence and limiting checks and balances. López Obrador, and now Sheinbaum, have argued the reform seeks to curb corruption in the judiciary and guarantee the rule of law.
González Alcántara’s ruling backed many of the arguments against the overhaul. By setting a first batch of judicial elections for mid-2025 — before the terms of many current judges end — Congress violated the independence of the judiciary and the constitutional separation of powers, he wrote.
Federal judges, González Alcántara argued, should remain in their posts for their full terms and “can only be removed through disciplinary or criminal” procedures that are “clearly established in advance.” The new system for nominating judicial candidates guarantees neither their independence, nor the reasoned and authentic votes of the citizens, he added.
The court’s decision not to continue with the challenge and the consolidation of the ruling party’s large majorities may lead Mexico to a centralist model, in which power is concentrated with the president, Villarreal said.
That model would represent “a change from a democracy of consensus to a democracy of majorities, in which conflict inevitably increases,” he said.
(Updates with analyst comments in seventh paragraph and final paragraph.)
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