Mexico's 11-member Supreme Court will be reduced to nine justices under a constitutional overhaul enacted last month, but winnowing the current court down won't be a problem: Eight justices submitted their resignations this week, including Norma Pina, the court's president, reports Reuters. Under the overhaul, all federal judges will have to be elected. The eight Supreme Court justices, whose resignations will mostly take effect next year, said they won't take part in an election for the top court scheduled in June, AFP reports.
Resigning before the election allows the judges to keep their pensions. "If they do not resign now, they will no longer have their retirement benefits," said President Claudia Sheinbaum, whose predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, proposed the reforms. The resignations came as the country's lower house approved a constitutional amendment that blocks the Supreme Court and other courts from suspending changes to the constitution, including the judicial overhaul, Bloomberg reports. The amendment will now be voted on by state legislatures, which are expected to pass it. The court had planned to review the overhaul next week.
The resignations add to tensions between the government and the country's top court, CNN reports. Opposition lawmakers and countries including the US have expressed worries about the overhaul, saying it could erode the separation of powers and threaten democracy, reports Bloomberg. In his resignation letter, one of the eight judges, Justice Alfredo Gutierrez, said, "It is necessary to underscore that this resignation does not imply an implicit acceptance of the reform's constitutionality." (More Mexico stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
