Edward Murillo
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, June 13, 2022, p. 7
The Chambers of Deputies and Senators have failed to comply with more than half a dozen sentences of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) in which they were ordered to correct legislative omissions, from official publicity and indigenous consultation to the use of public force. In most cases, these are matters that the Congress of the Union failed to meet with deadlines that it itself set.
The first time that the highest court issued such a ruling was on November 15, 2017, when the Legislative Power was ordered to issue a law that would regulate official advertising, in compliance with the deadline that the legislators themselves set when approving, in February 2014 , constitutional reform on freedom of expression.
Outside the deadline, Congress issued a first General Law of Social Communication, which was challenged as insufficient and, in September of last year, the SCJN issued a new ruling stating that this rule does not clarify the criteria for assigning official advertising, therefore that he should remedy the omission no later than April 8.
Another case is about the recreational consumption of marijuana. Since June 2018, the Court notified both chambers that there was jurisprudence on the unconstitutionality of prohibiting the use of the herb. This notice was made in order to reform the General Health Law, by eliminating any punishment for this practice.
However, this has not been done, so in June of last year the ministers issued a general declaration of unconstitutionality that erased from the law any punishment for consuming marijuana for recreational purposes, but legal loopholes remain that make it almost impossible to execute it, since there are no regulations on its production and trade.
On June 10, 2020, the second chamber pointed out another omission by not issuing a law on indigenous consultation, for which it violated the Constitution and also the commitment made by the Mexican State when signing Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.
In the past 12 months, the Court has issued rulings denouncing legislative omissions on the lack of a National Code of Civil and Family Procedures, a rule on conscientious objection for health personnel, reforms to the National Law on the Use of the Force and the obligation to issue a General Water Law, pending since 2012.
The Regulatory Law of Sections I and II of Article 105 of the Constitution establishes that if a judgment of the SCJN is not complied with, the matter must be turned over to the rapporteur minister so that he may prepare a project on the sanctions that must be applied.
