The Supreme Court and Labor Law, 1917–1924
contracts, in what sense were they not competent: what effect could their resolutions have if they lacked imperio?
Initially, at least before the Supreme Court’s membership began to change, it appeared that the federal judiciary would be able to dispose of these questions consistently under Lane Rincón, even augment the legal bases for curbing board rulings in a series of amparos pleaded from only a few states. The Court remained especially adamant that the boards lacked any juridical capacity.78 In the amparo of Martínez, the Court may have attained its most extreme stance, rejecting board pretensions to decide an employment dispute.79 The opinion began its legal analysis with a flat statement that Yucatán’s board had violated Article 13 of the constitution (prohibiting special courts for privileged individuals or entities).80 González and another justice dissented from the majority of seven.81
Twelve days after deciding Martínez, however, the Court issued its ruling in Victoria y Anexas, S.A.82 It, too, constituted a repudiation of the boards’ capacity to adjudicate a labor matter, but the ruling did not apply Article 13. The Court merely held that the central board of the state of Mexico lacked imperio, its opinion reiterating language from Lane Rincón regarding the board’s conciliatory function.83 A bare majority of six justices voted for the amparo, which entailed reversing the federal judge’s denial of the employer’s petition. The board had tried to apply the commercial code, which both the mining company and justices deemed the province of the law courts and beyond the competence of a labor board. At the same time, the Court had concluded of Article 123 that it held that boards needed to perform a function in industrial relations, a point not denied by the opinion of Lane Rincón. The federal judiciary, even after Lane Rincón, remained unsure of what the boards should do.
TOWARD LA CORONA
As recounted, in June 1919 the composition of the Supreme Court changed.84 New appointees to the high tribunal facilitated modifications of the case law, although the replacement of justices from the first to the second Court does not coincide neatly with the development of precedents, evidenced by the split decision in Victoria y Anexas. There was a more notable alteration in the Court’s position toward labor boards only in June 1921. Why would there have been such a shift then? One can surmise that political conditions had continued to evolve: Carranza’s government had given way to Obregón’s more progressive and populist politics in May 1920, while organized labor had begun to exercise more influence in several states. Per sis tent amparo appeals from labor board actions required the justices to continue to rule on the nature of these state organs.
In any event, in the amparo of La Blanca y Anexas, S.A., both the federal judge and the high court denied the mining company’s petition for relief from the award of the Junta Especial de Arbitraje de Pachuca, Hidalgo, which had ordered either the reinstatement of a worker or compensation in the sum of three months’ wages.85 The company had argued among other things that the board’s actions violated Article 13. The federal judge had rejected this argument, reasoning that the same constitutional text had also directed the establishments of labor boards. The Court essentially agreed with the federal judge and rejected the notion that any activity of the boards entailed a violation of Article 13, in one passage stating that even if the boards were not tribunals, if the award itself conformed with Article 123, it would be justified and could not violate individual rights guaranteed by constitutional Articles 13, 14, and 16.86 In this case, there was no account of a state agency attempting to enforce the award, so the mere declaration of it did not contradict the notion that compliance with the board’s determination remained voluntary.
One year after deciding La Blanca y Anexas, the Court marked a clearer break with past case law, without overturning any rulings. In Las Dos Estrellas, another mining company asserted that a board to be set up under Michoacán’s state labor code to hear the claims of four discharged workers would violate its rights under Articles 13 and 14.87 It was by then a standard argument of employers: the boards were actually impermissible special tribunals in contravention of Article 13. But under the Michoacán labor law, the board would have been authorized only to make a determination; enforcement of it would proceed in a law court.88 The Court rejected flatly the assertion that Article 13 could have been implicated by the board’s decision making, even if it had acted as a special tribunal, which the opinion hastily qualified boards were not. The second cohort of justices thus refused to entertain the theory that the boards were unconstitutional special tribunals, one that the first had briefly adopted. But the ruling in Las Dos Estrellas still rested on the premise that the boards lacked the power to effectuate their determinations, which was in this case bolstered by the legal framework of the Michoacán labor code.
The justices found more problematic Las Dos Estrellas’s invocation of jurisprudencia denying the boards the competency to hear disputes about terminated contracts, as the underlying dispute involved four ex-workers of the company. Rather than overturn its precedents, the Court found the four workers to have had existing employment contracts at the time they filed their complaints. To do so, it relied on the conditions necessary for termination under the Michoacán labor code. Only one of the parties, the employer, had sought to terminate the contract, and under the state code this was insufficient.89 One justice in the public conference queried the state law’s coherence and maintained that the contracts had been terminated consistent with the Court’s precedents.90 To apply prevalent case law in this case, however, would hinder the boards from even considering what Article 123 clearly encompassed. Doubting such limitations, delineated in earlier opinions, the Court now held that boards could hear most disputes arising between an employer and employee, citing La Blanca y Anexas.91
This highest federal tribunal, now composed by the second cohort of justices, was thus moving toward recognizing a larger role for the labor boards. The limit on boards only being able to hear disputes arising from contracts in force was not holding if Las Dos Estrellas and La Blanca acknowledged that most labor disputes were cognizable. Still, the Court continued to restrict boards to an advisory capacity.92 If the award had been deemed mandatory and about to be executed, then the amparo would have been merited. For greater clarity, in an atypical move the Court proceeded to restate its ruling.93 Only one justice dissented from the majority’s denial of the amparo. González wrote a separate opinion, as did a colleague. In it, González focused on the need to recognize the authority of the administrative boards to decide labor cases adequately and insisted that acknowledging this would not violate Article 13. González distinguished between unconstitutional special tribunals, which treated people differently and unequally, and courts with particular jurisdictions, of which the boards were basically an example. The latter maintained the liberal principle of equality before the law. González also rejected the emphasis on the notion of imperio. For him, jurisdiction was the crucial element of an authority charged with the capacity to resolve disputes.94 González’s opinion thus presented an alternative frame of legal analysis, one the Court was not ready to adopt.
Following its ruling in Las Dos Estrellas, the Court’s judgments in connection with board resolutions were more divided. The Court continued to maintain that its set of earlier rulings about the competency of the boards to hear only existing contracts constituted controlling law. It granted the employer an amparo in the Texas Company of Mexico against Veracruz’s central board in a narrow decision largely for procedural reasons.95 The Court reaffirmed its case law that board decisions did not have the character of definitive legal judgments and were mere administrative resolutions. Narrow as the ruling was, and as settled as the opinion’s language seemed, the vote split six to three, González with two other justices opposing the majority’s amparo.96 Similarly, the justices divided in another amparo decided on the same day. In Sansores, the employer, an estate owner, had appealed from a decision of the Yucatán Tribunal de Arbitraje to the federal district court.97 A supervisor had complained to the state’s board in April 1917 for unpaid wages accrued between August 1917 and March 1918. Justices again applied established case law in upbraiding the board for having acted outside of its competence. They reiterated the doctrine that the constitution restricted boards to resolving disputes arising from existing contracts. They thus affirmed the amparo granted by the district judge—but only by a margin of five to four.98
LA CORONA
On May 19, 1923, the Supreme Court ended its session, closing until July 27, when a new cohort of justices assumed its place on the bench. On January 24, 1924, they adjudicated the amparo of Díaz Ordaz. It was the first major appraisal of the legal authority of the juntas that the recently elected cohort made in a published opinion.99 Did Díaz Ordaz represent a new stance of a new Court?100 The opinion at first reading does not seem very remarkable. But it is another step toward the full legal recognition of the determinations of labor boards.101 Not coincidentally, the case involved the central labor board of Veracruz, one of the more active and persistent at the time. As pointed out, and similar to Yucatán, Veracruz had been among the first states to enact labor legislation. Since 1917, the municipality of Orizaba in Veracruz had become a center of labor radicalism under the control of the CROM.102