Nine Elected Supreme Court Justices Now Form the Mexican Supreme Court

On June 1st, Mexico held its first-ever judicial election. As part of that election, nine judges were elected to form the next Mexican Supreme Court,

The nine candidates who won took office on September 1st, 2025.

The Chief Justice, or as they say in Spanish, Presidente de la Corte, is Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, who was the biggest vote-getter on the Supreme Court ballot, receiving over 6 million votes (6,195,000). Here is the Chief Justice’s official photo:

Chief Justice Aguilar is a lawyer and Mixtec Indian from the state of Oaxaca. Aguilar served as indigenous rights coordinator of INPI, the Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas  (National Institute of Indigenous Peoples). Aguilar had never served as a judge before becoming Mexico’s Chief Justice.

Here is a list, in descending order of their votes, of the 9 justices of the Mexican Supreme Court.

1. Hugo Aguilar Ortiz
2. Lenia Batres Guadarrama, who was already on the Supreme Court.
3. Yasmin Esquivel Mossa, who was already on the Supreme Court.
4. Loreta Ortiz Ahlf, who was already on the Supreme Court.
5. Maria Estela Rios Gonzalez
6. Giovanni Azael Figueroa Mejia
7. Irving Espinosa Betanzo
8. Aristides Rodrigo Guerrero Garcia
9. Sara Irene Herrerias Guerra

It’s important to note that before the election, the MORENA party, which is the party of President Sheinbaum and the party that runs Congress, distributed papers to voters which listed judges on the ballot recommended by MORENA.

All nine winning judges, slated to serve on the new Supreme Court, were MORENA-approved, meaning it’s less likely that they are going to exhibit much judicial independence.

In fact, three of the judges (Batriz, Esquivel, Ortiz) were already on the Supreme Court, having been appointed to the Court by previous MORENA president AMLO. Another judge, Maria Estela Rios Gonzalez, is a former legal advisor to AMLO.

AMLO, moreover, did not like the Supreme Court ruling against him, and it is AMLO who engineered the judicial reform before he left the presidency on October 1st, 2024, to be replaced by Claudia Sheinbaum.

You can see the concern that this judicial election could be a way for MORENA to get control of the judicial branch.

Now that these justices are in office, observers can see how it really turns out.