2012 Supreme Court case In August 2011, three same-sex couples, four women and two men, applied to marry in
Oaxaca City but were rejected by local officials. They filed an
amparo, which was denied on 31 January, and subsequently
appealed to the Collegiate Courts in Civil and Administrative Matters for Oaxaca. The male couple received their authorization on 3 June 2013, On 26 August 2012, a federal judge ordered the state to perform
same-sex marriages based on the
Constitution of Mexico, which bans
discrimination on the grounds of
sexual orientation. This ruling, along with two similar cases, was reviewed by the Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous ruling on 5 December 2012 overturning the ban on same-sex marriage. However, under Mexican
jurisprudence, five identical rulings are required to establish binding
precedent. The Oaxaca case became pivotal in expanding access to same-sex marriage nationwide through the remedy. Drawing on international jurisprudence—including
Atala Riffo and Daughters v. Chile, as well as the U.S. cases of
Loving v. Virginia and
Brown v. Board of Education—and Mexico's own anti-discrimination laws, the Supreme Court concluded that laws restricting marriage to "one man and one woman", or limiting it to procreation, violate federal guarantees of equality and non-discrimination. The court held that such laws infringe upon not only the individual right to marry, but also the couple's right to form a
family. The court based its ruling on Articles 1 and 4 of the Constitution of Mexico. Article 1 of the Constitution states: Under Mexican law, jurisprudential precedent is established when five rulings in a state reach the same conclusion on the same legal issue. Once this threshold is met, the precedent overrides conflicting provisions in state legislation. Consequently, same-sex marriages granted through can be performed in any state, irrespective of whether the civil code has been amended. On 23 April 2014, the Supreme Court issued another in favor of 39 same-sex couples. In 2016, a couple from
San Juan Bautista Tuxtepec successfully obtained an allowing them to marry. In July 2017, a same-sex couple in Oaxaca City married without resorting to an , signaling a gradual normalization of the practice. The first recorded same-sex marriages in
Santiago Jamiltepec and
Salina Cruz occurred in April and May 2018, respectively, both granted through the remedy.
Directive and passage of legislation in 2019 On 26 August 2018, the state civil registry began allowing same-sex couples to marry without the need to first obtain an . However, the process took three business days compared to two hours for opposite-sex couples. Lawyer Daniel Merlin Tolentino explained that the longer waiting time for same-sex couples was intended to "ensure the marriage would comply with jurisprudence". The civil registry would "carefully" review each marriage request from same-sex couples to confirm its legitimacy, as state law at the time still banned same-sex marriages. To marry, a couple had to present valid documents, including a marriage request, both spouses'
birth certificates, official identification, and the results of a premarital medical test, and have at least four witnesses present. The cost was identical to that for heterosexual couples. On 28 August 2019, the
Congress of Oaxaca passed a bill in a 25–10 vote making the definition of marriage and
concubinage in the Civil Code
gender-neutral. The legislation was signed by
Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa on 29 August, published in the official state journal on 5 October 2019 and came into effect that same day. Article 143 of the Civil Code was amended to read:
Marriage is a civil contract entered into by two people, who come together to build a life in common and provide each other with respect, equality, and mutual support. ==Marriage statistics==