Latest Mexican Supreme Court ruling paves way to marriage equality across country

THE Mexican Supreme Court has unanimously ruled the denial of same-sex marriage rights as unconstitutional for the state of Jalisco, the Yucatan Times reported Friday.

Same-sex marriage is now possible in six of the 36 Federal Entities of Mexico, with the others likely to follow.

While the ruling doesn’t make it unconstitutional across the country, the significance of the it lies in how any case seeking to overturn unequal marriage rights in the Supreme Court will succeed.

The court found that Article 260 of Jalisco’s Civil Code “was unconstitutional because it undermined the self-determination of the people and against the right to free development of the personality of each individual”.

“Implicitly it generated a violation of the principle of equality, because from that purpose, a differential treatment of homosexual couples compared to heterosexual couples arose, to exclude the possibility of marriage,” the ruling states.

Jalisco sought to deny same-sex couples the right to marry in April last year when the Supreme Court began ruling in favour of marriage equality. Last week’s ruling means it now must accept the court’s decision having been left no room for appeal.

The state joins Mexico City, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nayarit and Quintana Roo as Federal Entities in which same-sex marriage is legal.

The ruling follows a “jurisprudential thesis”, announced last year, which declared same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional.

However, that thesis did not invalidate existing laws, meaning couples were forced to sue for the right to marry in each individual state.

Jalisco is home to more than seven million Mexicans and houses the country’s second-biggest city, Guadalajara.

Other Latin American countries that have already fully enacted marriage equality include Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.