A decision by Mexico's Supreme Court on September 25, 2025, risks undermining meaningful participation by people with disabilities in shaping laws that govern their rights and shape their futures, Human Rights Watch said today.
For nearly a decade, the Supreme Court upheld an important precedent that laws adopted without prior consultation with people with disabilities could not stand. This safeguard helped ensure that legislation would not move forward without hearing directly from those most affected. However, the newly introduced doctrine places the burden on parties to explicitly raise the issue of consultation. Even then, it allows legislation to stand if it is deemed beneficial to people with disabilities, regardless of whether consultation took place.
"Consultation is not a bureaucratic formality, but a right enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and a safeguard of dignity and democratic participation," said Carlos Ríos Espinosa, associate disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. "Mexico's legislatures need to ensure that people with disabilities have an active voice in shaping the laws that govern their lives."
The risks of bypassing consultation are clear. In October 2020, the Supreme Court issued Action of Unconstitutionality 109/2016, striking down a law in Chihuahua that allowed adults with disabilities to be legally adopted by older adults. Although the law was framed as a means to extend social security coverage, it treated adults with disabilities in a paternalistic manner, undermining their autonomy and denying their status as adults. The court's decision to invalidate the law was a victory, but it was based solely on procedural grounds: the absence of prior consultation.
The same reasoning was applied in other cases, including Action of Unconstitutionality 1/2017, which struck down Nuevo León's Autism Law, and Action of Unconstitutionality 109/2021, striking down Mexico City's Law of Education. In both instances, the court struck down legislation due to the absence of prior consultation with people with disabilities. In the Mexico City case, however, it also missed an opportunity to set substantive standards for inclusive education in the city.
The newly constituted Supreme Court which began its work in September 2025, in a case brought up by the National Commission of Human Rights challenging Law No. 817 for Persons with Disabilities of the State of Guerrero, announced a significant shift in doctrine. In its press release announcing the decision on September 22, the court stated that parties should now be responsible for raising issues of consultation, rather than the court addressing them ex officio: "From now on, the right to consultation will be analyzed when raised by the complainant, without automatically invalidating norms that may benefit people with disabilities. Likewise, it is anticipated that people with disabilities should play a leading role in the challenge."
While this approach seeks to move beyond procedural formality, it risks leaving consultation to chance. Legislators with good intentions may believe they are helping, but without listening directly to people with disabilities, they risk reinforcing harmful paternalism. Consultation is not an obstacle to progressive legislation, it is the guarantee that such legislation responds to the real needs and priorities of those concerned.
International law, particularly the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, recognizes that people with disabilities have the right to be directly involved in decisions that affect them. Consultation is not only a democratic practice; it is a safeguard against laws that patronize or exclude adults with disabilities, as was the case in Chihuahua ensuring consultation helps prevent the repetition of past mistakes, where well-meaning but misguided initiatives ultimately undermined rights.
To strengthen participation, legislatures should adopt clear and achievable consultation standards.
The court, in turn, should consider refining its approach. Given its decision to refrain from automatically invalidating laws that lack prior consultation, it could adopt balancing criteria that assess both the impact of the absence of consultation and the extent to which the legislation advances human rights. Avoiding rigidly formalistic standards is important, and each situation demands a case-by-case analysis. However, ideally the court would preserve ex officio review of the right to consultation, as this remains one of the most powerful tools to protect people with disabilities from exclusion in legislative processes, Human Rights Watch said.
Mexico has ratified the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which obliges it to ensure the full participation of people with disabilities in legislative and policy processes. National jurisprudence has already recognized consultation as a legislative formality. Weakening this safeguard undermines Mexico's international commitments and contradicts the core disability rights motto of "nothing about people with disabilities without people with disabilities."
"The Supreme Court should take care to preserve the most important protections available to people with disabilities in Mexico," Ríos Espinosa said. "It should consider ways to refine its approach to ensure both consultation and substantive analysis of disability rights in constitutional review."
