Mexico Passes Bill Barring Legal Challenges to Constitutional Changes

Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved sweeping new measures on Wednesday that would prevent legal challenges to constitutional amendments, allowing lawmakers to reshape the country’s charter without any judicial review — even from the Supreme Court.

The bill, which was already passed by the Senate last week, has drawn criticism from legal scholars and human rights experts, who say it would bulldoze any judicial oversight of constitutional matters and hand the ruling Morena party seemingly unchecked power to pass profound changes to the laws governing the nation.

Most state legislatures are expected to approve the measure in the coming days, paving the way for the president to sign it into law.

The move comes at a tense moment for Mexico, in which the major branches of government barreling toward open conflict over the fundamental makeup of the judicial system and the role it should play in the country’s democracy.

“This reform, if it passes, does place us in a context of an exercise of unlimited power,” said Guadalupe Salmorán Villar, a researcher on global rule of law and constitutional democracy based in Mexico City. “It’s an overt attempt by the federal government, with the support of the large congressional majority of Morena and its allies, to politically subjugate the judiciary.”

Olga Sánchez Cordero, a Morena lawmaker, said that while the initiative would bar courts from weighing in on the content of constitutional amendments, it would not prohibit challenges on procedural grounds. Until now, she said, the Constitution has not been clear on how changes to the charter could be revised, but now there would be “a clear, explicit, unequivocal mechanism” for evaluating them.