They discuss in Court whether the State should pay SNII incentives to private institutions
Laura Poy Solano
La Jornada Newspaper
Monday, January 26, 2026, p. 11
If the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) rules in favor of the amparos filed by individuals against the General Law on Humanities, Sciences, Technologies and Innovation (LGHCTI), so that the salary incentives received by researchers from private universities, attached to the National System of Researchers (SNII), are borne by the State, “it would be a very serious blow” to the new regulatory framework of the sector that puts the public interest before private, stated members of the community of researchers and specialists in constitutional law.
In interview with The Daypointed out that the SCJN is currently reviewing 88 trials (86 amparos and two unconstitutionality actions) in which private institutions and researchers argue that articles 34, 41 and tenth transitional of the LGHCTI violate the principle of equality and non-discrimination. Among them, the protections under review 416/2025 and 437/2025, handed over to ministers Arístides Rodrigo Guerrero and Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, respectively.
Dr. Raymundo Espinoza Hernández, researcher and former head of the Legal Affairs Unit of the defunct National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies, now the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation, stated that “the law is clear: the SNII is a support mechanism to strengthen public capacities. Its objective is researchers assigned to or working in universities, institutes or research centers in the public sector,” he explained and warned that if the highest court gives a negative resolution against the law, the “Mexican State will always have the obligation to subsidize private universities,” even though they are for-profit institutions.
Espinoza Hernández pointed out that the LGHCTI does open ways for scientists from private institutions to access the stimuli of the SNII. The first is to carry out humanistic, scientific, technological development or innovation research activities in public universities, even if they work in a private institution. What is relevant is that their work contributes to the public interest, he indicated.
“There is no discrimination against paying universities”
The other way is for the private university where they work to sign an agreement with the Ministry of Science and Technology, in which, “after being evaluated by the government and achieving access to a level of the SNII, the private institution for which they work agrees to pay their stimulus, so there is no discrimination.”
For his part, Dr. Isaac de Paz González, professor and researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California and expert in constitutional law, highlighted that being part of the SNII and receiving a salary stimulus is not a right, so it cannot be considered that there is discrimination, when the law is clear in the objective of strengthening public capacities and not private ones, which do have profit purposes.
Although he recognized the importance of the SCJN discussing central issues for the country’s scientific community, he assured that in the norm “there is no discrimination” for scientists from private universities, who may belong to the SNII, but whose incentives “must be covered by their private institutions, many of them for-profit and with tuition fees ranging from 90 thousand to 220 thousand pesos per year, just to mention those that are offered as accessible.”
