The Senate on Wednesday received letters of resignation from eight of Mexico’s 11 Supreme Court justices (SCJN), Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña said.
The resignation, announced by Fernández on social media and later confirmed by SCJN, came after Mexico’s Congress last month approved a controversial judicial reform that would allow Mexicans to directly elect all judges, including Supreme Court justices.
The first judicial elections are scheduled to be held next year.
In most cases, the new judge’s resignation will take effect on August 31, 2025. Judges elected next year will assume their positions as Mexico’s highest-ranking judges.
Among the eight judges who submitted their resignations was Supreme Court Justice Norma Piña.
He and his six colleagues have decided not to contest the judicial elections scheduled to be held on June 1, 2025. The 15-year term of Judge Luis María Aguilar, one of the judges who sent a letter of resignation to the Senate, ends on November 30. His resignation is largely symbolic given that his resignation will take effect on the day his term ends.
Piña stated in his resignation letter that he did not want to leave office, but decided to step down as “an act in harmony with and respect for the text of the constitution that governs us today.”
The constitution was changed in September when former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced judicial reforms.
“We must have an authentic and true rule of law, not a distorted rule of law,” López Obrador said at the time.
In addition to Piña, who was appointed to the SCJN in 2015 during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, the judges who will step down from Mexico’s highest court are:
- Luis María Aguilar (appointed in 2009 during the presidency of Felipe Calderón)
- Jorge María Pardo (appointed in 2011 during Calderón’s presidency)
- Alberto Pérez Dayán (nominated by Calderón but assumed his position in 2012 during Peña Nieto’s presidency)
- Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena (nominated by Calderón but assumed his position in 2012 during Peña Nieto’s presidency)
- Javier Laynez (appointed in 2015 during Peña Nieto’s presidency)
- Juan Luis González Alcántara Carrancá (appointed in 2018 during López Obrador’s presidency)
- Ana Margarita Rios Farjat (Appointed in 2019 During Lopez Obrador’s Presidency)
Earlier this week it was widely reported that the judges mentioned above would resign. In fact, their decision was a protest against judicial reform, which critics said would lead to the erosion of the independence of Mexico’s judiciary.
Gutiérrez, who made critical comments about judicial reform at a recent event at Harvard University, said in his resignation letter that he did not consider himself “an appropriate candidate for a position that depends on popular support.”
“While my career and abilities qualify me to be a judge, in that job – for which I feel more than capable – my role is not to vindicate the will of the majority, but rather to protect the rights of those most in need,” he said. said.
Gutiérrez also said in his letter that “it is worth underlining that this resignation does not mean an implicit acceptance of [judicial] constitutionality of the reform.”
More than 400 lower court judges also said they would not run in judicial elections next year.
Only three current Supreme Court justices, Lenia Batres, Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, and Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, intend to run in the 2025 elections.
Batres, Esquivel and Ortiz were all appointed during López Obrador’s 2018-2024 presidency, and, unlike the other two judges appointed during the previous administration, are widely seen as sympathetic to the ruling Morena party and its agenda.
During López Obrador’s six years in office, the SCJN issued a number of decisions that contradicted the previous government’s initiatives, including electoral reform, electricity reform, and a reform that placed the National Guard under military control.
The former president argued that a judicial overhaul was necessary to ensure that Mexico’s courts were free of corruption and served the interests of the majority of Mexicans, not those of an elite minority.
President Claudia Sheinbaum fully supports the reforms, and agrees with López Obrador that they are necessary to rid the justice system of corruption and other ills.
Fernández and Sheinbaum emphasized that the judge’s motivation for resigning was money
Fernández Noroña, a Morena party senator, said on Tuesday that the judges resigned because they wanted to leave their posts with “full saddlebags.”
They want to make sure they receive all of their retirement benefits, he said, referring to benefits that judges typically only get if they complete their prescribed 15-year term.
“The current constitution… provides that if they do not… [resign by Oct. 30]they won’t have it [full] current pension,” said Fernández.
President Claudia Sheinbaum made a similar argument Tuesday.
“If they don’t submit their resignation now, they won’t get a resignation letter [same] retirement benefits. … That’s a lot of money,” he said.
Judge Margarita Ríos said Wednesday that she would not accept the large retirement benefits Fernández and Sheinbaum mentioned or donate the money to less fortunate children.
The newspaper Milenio, citing unnamed Supreme Court sources, reported that the judges who submitted resignation letters to the Senate negotiated their resignations with Senator Adán Augusto López, leader of Morena’s upper chamber. They reportedly made payment of full retirement benefits a condition for submitting their resignations.
If the outgoing judges (excluding Aguilar) choose to compete in judicial elections next year, they will not only risk not being elected – a high probability given Morena’s popularity in Mexico – but will also suffer an even worse fate when they retire.
Can the Senate refuse to accept the resignation?
Senator Fernández said on Tuesday that the Senate – dominated by Morena and her allies – may not accept the judge’s resignation.
“Whether we accept it or not is our right. … We will wait and see what we do,” he said.
Fernández indicated that the decision would come after the Supreme Court issues a ruling on Judge González Alcantara Carrancá’s proposal to overturn a provision in the judicial reform that would have allowed all Mexican judges and magistrates to be elected. Despite the Senate president’s statement, it appears the Senate will not accept the resignation.
Under González’s proposal – which the SCJN will consider next Tuesday – only Supreme Court judges would be selected in judicial elections.
Morena has successfully passed a so-called “constitutional supremacy” bill through Congress that would prevent legal challenges to constitutional reforms that have been approved by federal lawmakers and ratified by state legislatures. The bill was approved by the Senate last week and passed by the House of Representatives today.
The primary motivation for this law was a federal judge’s order that decisions announcing judicial reform be removed from the government’s official gazette.
Sheinbaum did not comply with the order, arguing that the judge did not have the authority to issue it.
The president – who in his first month in office has shown himself to be as fierce as López Obrador in his criticism of Mexico’s current judiciary – last week insisted that judicial reform would be “an example for the world” in terms of how to carry out judicial reform. creating a strong justice system.
“If [there is] something we are doing in Mexico that will be an example for the world, … [it is] election of the judiciary. “This will be an example because it is the people who elect judges, magistrates and Supreme Court justices,” Sheinbaum said.
One critic of the reform is United States Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar.
“I believe the direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexican democracy,” he said in August, drawing rebukes from López Obrador and Sheinbaum.
The president has stated that judges are elected in many American states, although federal judges and Supreme Court justices are nominated by the American president and confirmed by the United States Senate.
With reports from Reforma, Milenio, Animal Político, El Financiero, El Universal and El Economista