Firm and in force, the constitutionality of the Electricity Industry Law: SCJN

Edward Murillo

Newspaper La Jornada
Wednesday, April 20, 2022, p. 4

The decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) on the constitutionality of the Law of the Electricity Industry (LIE) was finalized, after the plenary session of ministers unanimously ratified the minutes of its session of last April 7 , when they rejected the challenge of opposition senators against this norm.

Four ministers, Mario Pardo Rebolledo, Norma Lucía Piña Hernández, Luis María Aguilar Morales and Juan Luis González Alcántara announced that they will present explanatory votes, in which they will not change the meaning of their decision, and will only provide more arguments to support it.

Obviously, the minutes will no longer be varied, it was already voted unanimously, and if there are clarifications to be made, they will be made by the ministers in a clarifying vote.explained the minister president, Arturo Zaldívar.

For her part, Minister Norma Lucía Piña Hernández pointed out that the document, approved in an economic vote, reflects the meaning of the approved decisions: I vote with the minutes, since it is the document that reproduces what happened in session.

With this ratification, the highest court dismantled the criticisms that warned of an alleged error or manipulation in the counting of the votes of the session of April 7, which indicated that in truth the 8 votes necessary to declare the LIE unconstitutional had been met.

At the same time, the SCJN refused to process the request of the opposition senators, who in a letter asked to review the votes. This document was not admitted for processing, because the legislators did not even sign it, according to what is recorded in the courts of the highest court.

In this regard, it is indicated that there is no place to agree in conformity, by virtue of the fact that the reference document, as already announced, does not have an autograph signature, an essential requirement to make the will of the subscriber clear, an issue that is corroborated with the reason established by the Office of Judicial Certification and Correspondence of this High Court that works at the bottom of the meritsestablishes the respective agreement.

Once this procedure was completed, the plenary session of ministers voted to dismiss, that is, to dismiss as inadmissible, the last pending constitutional trial against the LIE.

This is the constitutional controversy 45/2021, promoted by the previous state government of Colima.

A majority of seven of the members of the plenary of ministers considered that there was no provision in the LIE that infringed the legal powers of the state government, so there were no grounds to sustain the controversy.

The promulgation of the contested decree does not generate an invasion of the powers of the state of Colima, since the Congress of the Union has the express power throughout the Republic on electrical energy and commerce, as well as to issue all the provisions that are necessary in order to exercise those powersspecified Minister Loretta Ortiz, rapporteur on this matter.