President Sheinbaum rebuked six Supreme Court justices for voting to restore taxpayer-funded major medical insurance for judicial staff, invoking Benito Juárez and republican austerity: “No to privileges.”

This article by Nancy Flores originally appeared in the August 19, 2026 edition of Contralínea, a Mexican investigative journalism magazine.

“Something happens when they walk into that building [the seat of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation], doesn’t it? Yes, it’s like they get transformed, I don’t know. It must be haunted [by] the spirits of the past, I don’t know,” President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said mockingly this morning, before going on to criticize the six justices who voted to restore major medical expenses insurance for judicial staff, instead of pursuing republican austerity.

“It’s not right, that’s my opinion. No to privileges.”

Claudia Sheinbaum

She said this from the National Palace. Asked by Contralínea about this initiative by Justice Yasmín Esquivel Mossa—approved with the votes of Justices Irene Herrerías Guerra, Estela Ríos González, Loretta Ortiz Ahlf, and also Giovanni Figueroa and Aristides Guerrero—to reinstate the medical expenses insurance, Sheinbaum Pardo recalled that these are privileges because they are paid for with the people’s money.

She recalled that Benito Juárez—whom she described as “the best president of the [Supreme] Court there has ever been in history”—fought against special immunities and privileges. “We have to remember history and how they got [to the SCJN through the judicial reform] and why they got there. So, I do not agree with there being privileges.”

The head of the federal Executive stated that if the justices who voted for this reinstatement “want to pay for major medical expenses insurance with their salary, then go ahead, they have every freedom to allocate their income to whatever they decide, but it is not right for public funds to be used for major medical expenses insurance.”

Sheinbaum Pardo stressed that public servants can receive care at ISSSTE and IMSS Bienestar. “And if not, then pay for your own medical expenses insurance. That’s how it should be. We must not go back to privileges. So, we have to shake off a bit of the atmosphere that stayed there, in the walls, I don’t know, and remember Juárez, republican austerity.”

She also recommended that the justices stay close to the people “to realize what the majority of Mexican women and men experience, because one must behave with humility.” And she reminded them that they have a good salary: “they have the president’s salary, and with that it could be enough for major medical expenses insurance, if they so wish. But not the… The money belongs to the people, and that is something all of us who are public servants must remember. To be a ‘public servant’ means to be at the service of the people, all of us who are public servants.”

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