High Court dismisses threshold challenge

Three petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Senate impeachment court’s revised interpretation of the voting threshold for the conviction of Vice President Sara Duterte were dismissed by the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday, without a ruling on their merits.

The dismissal was made during the SC’s regular en banc session Wednesday on procedural grounds, including lack of legal standing and prematurity.

The petitions were filed by former Executive Secretary and losing senatorial candidate Victor Rodriguez, lawyer Ernesto Francisco Jr. and disbarred lawyer Berteni Causing.

The petitioners questioned the authority of the Senate, acting as an impeachment court, to amend Article XI, Section 3(6) of the Constitution, which requires “two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate” to convict an impeachable official.

The petitions stemmed from the impeachment court’s 23 September 2026 ruling, in which 13 senator-judges voted in favor of Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo’s motion to set aside the 6 July 2026 ruling of Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero requiring 16 votes to convict Duterte under Article XI, Section 3(6).

Under the new ruling, the phrase “all the Members of the Senate” refers to senator-judges who, at the time of the verdict, are legally and factually capable of participating in the impeachment proceedings.

Escudero said, “The phrase ‘all Members of the Senate’ shall refer to those members who, at the time of the vote, remain legally and factually capable of participating in the proceedings.”

The impeachment court identified five circumstances that may justify excluding a senator from the counting base: being detained or legally restrained; being sought by authorities with unknown whereabouts; being physically or medically incapacitated; being beyond the Senate’s coercive processes; or being in another circumstance similarly situated to the specified categories.

Rodriguez argued that under Article XVII of the 1987 Constitution, its provisions may be amended only through a vote of three-fourths of all members of Congress or a constitutional convention.

“No provision of Article XVII authorizes the Senate Impeachment Tribunal to modify a constitutional provision through adjudicative ruling,” he said.

Francisco described the impeachment court’s ruling as a “capricious, arbitrary and whimsical interpretation” that amounted to a constitutional amendment.

“Substituting ‘all members of the Senate’ with ‘those members who... remain legally and factually capable of participating’ constitutes a rewriting of the Constitution, which the public respondent Senate Impeachment Court cannot legally do,” Francisco said.

Causing argued that senators who remain in office should still be counted even if they are in hiding, detained or medically unable to attend.

The three petitions sought a temporary restraining order and/or a status quo ante order to stop implementation of the new threshold pending the Court’s final ruling on the merits.