The Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN) has officially validated the Fondo de Pensiones para el Bienestar, ruling by unanimity that transferring unclaimed individual retirement accounts from AFORES to the state does not constitute an unconstitutional expropriation or confiscation of worker assets.
A Unanimous Verdict on Retirement Account Transfers
In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the full bench of Mexico’s highest court dismissed an action of unconstitutionality brought forward by 185 opposition legislators. The legal challenge targeted a legislative decree promulgated on April 30, 2024 by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which authorized the movement of nearly 45 billion pesos from inactive individual accounts into a collective solidarity fund.
Writing the court’s project, Minister Loretta Ortiz Ahlf argued that moving these capital reserves fails to breach fundamental property rights. According to laregiontula.com.mx, the capital deposited in individual accounts remains at all times the property of the working individuals or pensioners, establishing a mechanism for restitution.
Minister Presidente Hugo Aguilar Ortiz addressed anxiety surrounding the reform during the court proceedings, rejecting characterizations of the fund as a confiscation or expropriation. Aguilar Ortiz emphasized that the administrative shift alters the administrator while preserving the property of the resources in favor of the workers, ensuring that those who can recover them may do so.
Structuring Social Solidarity and Financial Sufficiency
The architecture of the Fondo de Pensiones para el Bienestar relies on a collective solidarity model designed to guarantee that workers who contributed during their active working life have access to a pension equivalent to the last minimum wage they received. Minister Yasmín Esquivel Mossa highlighted that the decree amended laws across the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS), the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE), and Infonavit to mandate a reserve of resources.
These reserves exist specifically to guarantee financial sufficiency to back the restitution of resources when demanded by the holders of the sub-accounts and their beneficiaries. Minister Giovanni Figueroa Mejía underscored that leveraging unclaimed money to complement other pensions aligns with a collective and solidary model of social security, provided the underlying ownership remains intact and recoverable.
Under the validated rules, AFORES along with PENSIONISSSTE must transfer inactive balances once a worker reaches age 70 for IMSS, or age 75 for ISSSTE, provided no active employment relationship remains on record.
The tribunal also swept aside procedural objections raised by the opposition regarding debates within congressional committees, ruling that these were «purgadas» to allow open, public debate within the Chamber of Deputies. With the judicial hurdle cleared, the fund continues to operate as a public trust with Banco de México as fiduciario.
The Path Forward for Retirement Security
Aguilar Ortiz has ordered that explanatory project materials and slides remain publicly accessible on the SCJN official portal.
