When Mexican judge Juan Pablo Gómez Fierro goes out for a walk, there are people who recognize him. They congratulate him on his work and call him “brave”, say sources close to the lawyer. A few weeks ago he put on the coveted doctor’s cap from the Escuela Libre de Derecho, the most prestigious in the country in the field, and his followers on Twitter – it has more than 26,000 – encouraged him. There were even those who declared themselves “number one fan.”
This level of care is unusual for the head of a district court in administrative matters, two instances below the brilliance of the Supreme Court. The suspensions that he has decreed for two controversial reforms of the Executive have turned him into a totem for the opposition and a punching bag for the Government. Friends and former colleagues, however, emphasize his independence of judgment and his discreet and tenacious character. Tall and strongly built, fond of crossfit and reading Mexican history, it is unlikely, they say, that the attacks of the Executive will double it.
At the beginning of March, the judge granted the provisional suspension, then definitive, to the companies that presented amparos against the electricity reform, one of the priorities of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The decision, of a general nature, froze the effects of the rule for the entire sector, not just the complainants. This Tuesday, in a new blow to the Government, it granted the first individual suspension to a citizen who defended himself against the registration of biometric data for cell phone users. “It could not be suitable or proportional,” said the judge on the reform of the Federal Telecommunications Law, highly criticized by civil society organizations.
These actions have earned him harsh attacks from the Executive, of a virulence that the jurists consulted do not recall having heard from the authorities in recent times against a specific judge. After the suspension of the electricity reform, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked the Federal Judiciary Council, the body in charge of ensuring the good behavior of judges, to investigate the actions of Gómez Fierro. The president of the entity, Arturo Zaldívar, who also leads the Supreme Court, took note of the petition although he stressed the importance of the “autonomy” of the Judicial Power in the face of this apparent interference by the Executive.
With the decision on the registration of biometric data, his name has broken in again in the mornings. The Undersecretary of Public Security, Ricardo Mejía, came out on Wednesday to defend the measure and poured a string of disqualifications on Gómez Fierro. “A judge in a way, a judge by commission, which is the one that interest groups always use (…), is a contentillo judge who acts as a courtesy,” the official said to the media. The president joined the attack: “This judge who grants like this, quickly, protection for the telephone cards to companies is the same judge who protects electricity companies.”
The arguments used over and over again to undermine the credibility of Gómez Fierro revolve around the “suspicious” speed with which he resolves suspensions and the fact that people or companies that oppose the government’s rules always turn to he. Regarding the first, the law that regulates the amparo mechanism establishes that the judge must decide within 24 hours on the admission of the claim and decide whether to grant a suspension. “It is the legislation that forces to pronounce on the temporary suspension in a short space of time,” says Pedro Salazar, director of the Institute of Legal Research at UNAM.
Regarding the supposed favoritism that Gómez Fierro enjoys among the companies, the lawyer Gabino González points out that in the entire country there are only two specialized courts in economic competition and telecommunications. “Either it will be Juan Pablo or Rodrigo de la Peza. There are no others, ”he says. In addition, González points to other decisions by Gómez Fierro that favored López Obrador. In 2018, when he was the head of another court, the judge rejected the protection requested by a citizen to suspend the effects of the consultation called by the then president-elect to cancel the new Mexico City airport.
Gómez Fierro has not given interviews since the conflict with the government escalated. Your office responds to this newspaper that it is working on a file and does not want the process to be affected. A secrecy that does not indicate a change of course due to government pressure, assure people who know it. “He is facing an issue that has to do with very strong economic interests, but he is going to resist the pressure,” says Diego Galeana, a law professor at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí and a friend of his since he was twenty years old. “He is someone very disciplined, with temperance, of the people in football who you kick and keep running.”
Born in San Luis Potosí in 1983, Gómez Fierro comes from a middle-class family. His mother is a housewife and his father is a public defender. At the end of the degree, he made the usual trip from the province to Mexico City, the place where laws are made and broken, to study a master’s degree. “He went to chase his dream,” says Galeana. From his formative years a manual emerged to elaborate amparo sentences of which he is a co-author. It has been reissued several times and is used in classrooms across the country, including that of his friend Galeana. “He understands the Law as someone who is building a puzzle,” says the latter.
Despite the elitist whiff that the Government wants to pin on him, Gómez Fierro has developed his entire career in the public sector. He has climbed the hierarchy without skipping any stage: judicial officer, actuary, court clerk, court clerk and, after passing a knowledge test, he entered the Supreme Court as Secretary of Study and Account of Minister José Fernando Franco González Salas, reputed to belong to the conservative wing. He was joined by Gómez Fierro’s interest in history, of which he is a regular reader.
His former colleagues on the highest court point out the technical and discreet profile of Gómez Fierro. Alfredo Herrera, who worked in the team of another minister, recalls that his partner’s projects “were very careful, with an effort for clear, judicial language, but trying to present new features in the structure.” “Despite González Salas’ conservative philosophy, he was always open to other opinions to improve his projects,” he says. Gabino González, Secretary of Studies for former Minister José Ramón Cossío, describes him as a “reserved person, involved in his work and not at all strident”.
A low profile that he knew how to maintain since his appointment as judge in 2015, but which has been cracked in recent months. His recent decisions have surprised his former colleagues by their forcefulness and novel interpretations, with frequent citations to precedents of the Supreme Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Herrera points to the general nature of the suspension of the electricity reform, something that angered López Obrador. “He has built criteria that surprised many. He justifies on an issue of equality, non-discrimination, that the suspension of the electricity reform has general effects. Despite not being novel, applying it to this case, which was the front line of political power, showing that ease, it is meritorious, ”says Herrera. “Many of us may not agree, but it is well founded.”
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source https://pledgetimes.com/gomez-fierro-the-discreet-judge-who-angers-lopez-obrador/
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