(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s Supreme Court has rejected a ruling aimed at limiting the scope of a judicial review passed by Congress, easing concerns about a standoff with President Claudia Sheinbaum that risked sparking a constitutional crisis taken away.
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The decision to dismiss the case was approved unanimously after the Supreme Court failed to reach the majority needed to approve the ruling.
Judge Juan Luis González Alcántara’s proposal was intended to uphold the legality of popular elections for members of the Supreme Court, one of the main objectives of the judicial review. But the ruling also aimed to declare unconstitutional the snap election of the country’s federal judges, many of whom will be on the ballot next year.
The ruling, written in response to several challenges to the reform, 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 believed that the objections supporting González Alcántara’s proposal were valid.
The justices who voted against approving the proposal argued that discussing reforms or additions to the Constitution is not within the purview of the Supreme Court.
Judge Yasmín Esquivel said that approving González Alcántara’s proposal would only increase the confrontation between the judiciary and legislature. “It would inevitably lead us to break the balance that must exist between judicial moderation and respect for the separation of powers. History will judge us, let us not measure the forces, let us be responsible.”
“González Alcántara’s proposal was intended to negotiate and find a middle ground, but despite the government’s refusal, the Supreme Court made a rational calculation and preferred to make a decision that excludes the possibility of a constitutional crisis,” said Juan Carlos. Villarreal, professor of political science at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico.
Sheinbaum has accused González Alcántara and his colleagues of trying to rewrite laws passed by Congress, violating the will of the Mexican people, which gave her party strong majorities in both chambers. She also said she had a plan in place should the proposal pass.
“Today the court defeated itself, due to an incorrect, biased action, and today the country is saved, the trial continues and the judges will be elected,” Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña said after the decision.
The overhaul was championed by Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and passed during his last month in office. Critics – including the US government and foreign investors – argue that the election of judges will endanger Mexican democracy by damaging judicial independence and limiting checks and balances. López Obrador, and now Sheinbaum, have argued that the reform aims to curb corruption in the judiciary and guarantee the rule of law.
González Alcántara’s ruling supported many of the arguments against the revision. By calling a first round of judicial elections in mid-2025 — before the terms of many current judges expire — Congress has 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 the entirety of their terms and “can only be dismissed through disciplinary or criminal” procedures that are “clearly established in advance.” The new system for appointing judicial candidates guarantees neither their independence nor the reasoned and authentic voices of citizens, he added.
The court’s decision not to pursue the challenge and the consolidation of the ruling party’s large majorities could move Mexico toward a centralist model, in which power is concentrated in 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 commentary in seventh paragraph and final paragraph.)
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