Supreme Court dismisses petitions challenging impeachment vote threshold

The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday dismissed three petitions seeking to declare unconstitutional the Senate Impeachment Court’s decision to lower the voting threshold for the conviction of Vice President Sara Duterte.

The decision was reached during the SC’s regular en banc session on Wednesday.

The three petitions were dismissed on procedural grounds, including lack of legal standing and prematurity.

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

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

On 23 September 2026, 13 senator-judges voted in favor of Senator-Judge Erwin Tulfo’s motion to set aside the 6 July 2026 ruling issued by Impeachment Court Presiding Officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero, which required 16 votes to convict Duterte in line with Article XI, Section 3(6) of the Constitution.

Under the Impeachment Court’s new ruling on the voting threshold, the constitutional 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 high court also 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 can only be amended upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members or through a constitutional convention.

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

Francisco, on the other hand, branded the Impeachment Court’s ruling as a “capricious, arbitrary and whimsical interpretation” that amounts 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 in his petition 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 the issuance of a temporary restraining order and/or a status quo ante order enjoining the implementation of the new threshold pending the Court’s final ruling on the merits of the cases.