The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) criticized the state legislatures of Campeche and Tamaulipas for enacting laws that fail to recognize the rights of minors who identify with a different gender identity and that promote “induction into homosexuality.”
The cases reached the highest court after the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) filed constitutional challenges, arguing that the civil and penal codes of both states violate the rights to equality and non-discrimination and infringe upon the right to the free development of personality. Consequently, the full court invalidated the laws.
In the case of Campeche, Justice Giovanni Figueroa Mejía presented a draft opinion to invalidate Article 149 Ter, section three of the Civil Code, which stipulates that individuals who identify with a different gender identity can only obtain a new birth certificate upon reaching the age of majority and presenting their voter registration card.
“The Campeche Congress failed to consider that children and adolescents go through different stages in their lives, progressively developing skills and emotions that allow them to gradually make increasingly important decisions.”
“We call this the progressive autonomy of children and adolescents. In that sense, it is disproportionate for the Campeche Congress to completely deprive children and adolescents of exercising this right until they reach the age of majority,” he stated.
For his part, Justice Arístides Guerrero García presented another draft opinion proposing to invalidate the first paragraph of Article 192 of the Tamaulipas Penal Code, which states that anyone who induces, by any means, a minor to engage in begging, drunkenness, drug use, prostitution, or homosexuality commits the crime of corruption of minors.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Hugo Aguilar Morales, said that this article “reflects a negative perception of homosexuality” because it was included among the crimes that offend public morality.
“In other words, the crime is not defined, considering that the legal right to be protected is sexual freedom and the free development of personality. The crime is not defined because it is considered an affront to morality; that is, it is being argued that homosexuality is an affront to public morality,” she stated.
In this regard, Minister Lenia Batres Guadarrama commented that this law not only violates the rights of LGBTTIQ+ people, but also perpetuates discriminatory ideas incompatible with the principles of dignity, equality, and the free development of personality.
“It is worth noting that around 2020, Mexico ranked second in Latin America for hate crimes, according to the Metropolitan Autonomous University, with 30 percent of these types of cases, or a 30 percent increase in such cases.”
“According to the National Observatory of Hate Crimes against LGBTTIQ+ People, between 2014 and 2025, at least 739 cases of murders and disappearances of people from the LGBTQ+ community have been registered in Mexico,” she added.
The judge emphasized that the trend in the last decade has been the decriminalization of conduct based on stigma and prejudice against the LGBTTIQ+ community.
She cited as examples states such as Aguascalientes, Baja California Sur, Campeche, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Puebla, which amended their penal codes to repeal the provision that established inducing homosexuality as a form of the crime of corruption of minors and incapacitated persons.
Givoanni Figueroa commented that the law is not only discriminatory, but is also based on an outdated and misguided notion that sexual orientation is a conscious choice.
“Sexual orientation cannot be induced or modified by external acts of other people,” he emphasized.
Source: milenio
