Mexico’s Senate approves contentious judicial overhaul after protesters storm chamber

Mexico's Senate approves controversial judiciary overhaul, making all judges stand for election, sparking protests and concerns for democracy.

Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday (September 11, 2024) to overhaul the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.

The approval came in two votes after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday (September 10, 2024), interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the governing party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.

The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. Approval by the Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.

One came Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul took leave for medical reasons and his father, a former governor, suggested he would vote for the proposal. The lawmaker ended up returning to his seat to give the proposal the last vote it needed.

Both of the Senate votes were 86-41, with the second result coming around 4 a.m. The chamber erupted into cheers and chants of “Yes, we could!”

The legislation must now be ratified by the legislatures of at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 States. The governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major gains in recent elections. Oaxaca's legislature became the first to ratify it just hours after the Senate's approval.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers on passing the overhaul.