The Constitutional Court declares Law 31232 on resettlement unconstitutional

The Constitutional Court expressly declared Law 31232 unconstitutional, by declaring founded the request for correction of resolutive point 2 of the judgment issued in Case 00018-2023-PI/TC. The decision is contained in an order from the Jurisdictional Plenary dated October 2, 2026, and published on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, in the Constitutional Processes section of the official newspaper El Peruano, Year XXII, No. 4456. This closes the omission of the judgment, which had declared the lawsuit founded without specifying the legal consequence regarding the challenged law.

The request was submitted on July 14, 2026, by the public prosecutor specializing in Constitutional Matters of the Executive Branch, and the Court verified that it was filed within the two-day period provided for in Article 121 of the New Constitutional Procedural Code. In the judgment of the case, the Collegiate Body had concluded that Law 31232 incurred substantive violations of the Constitution and declared the lawsuit founded in those respects, but without expressly mentioning the unconstitutionality of the norm. The order recalls that a favorable judgment in an unconstitutionality process must necessarily contain that declaration in its resolutive part.

The new text of resolutive point 2

The Court ordered that resolutive point 2 be drafted in the following terms: declare the lawsuit founded regarding the transgression of:

• the constitutional budgetary principles, especially the principle of budgetary balance;
• the prohibition of public expenditure initiatives;
• the competence of the Executive Branch to administer public finances;

and, consequently, declare Law 31232 unconstitutional. The order specifies that the judgment had already warned that a regulation such as the one analyzed necessarily required favorable reports from the Executive Branch, a requirement that was not met, and that the Executive opposed the approval and validity of the law at all times with technical and budgetary arguments.

The requests that were rejected

The prosecutor had filed three requests for correction and two for clarification. The Court declared only the first one founded and dismissed the others:

• Unfounded the alleged material error regarding the binding force of the report of Case File 00018-2021-PI/TC (Case of Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector III): the Collegiate Body held that five votes coincided with resolution point 3 of the judgment and that the change in criteria was duly evidenced.
• Unfounded the alleged omission regarding the departure from the criteria of Judgment 337/2022 (Case File 00027-2021-PI/TC, Case of the emergency and reform of the National Health System), a decision that had a temporally, materially, and factually limited scope due to the pandemic.
• Inadmissible the requests for clarification regarding the application of the new interpretation criteria of Article 79 of the Constitution and regarding the scope of the term “publication,” as these are inquiries unrelated to the purpose of the legal instrument.

Resettlement, Belén, and the precedent on public spending

The order reviews the substantive analysis of the judgment. Regarding the voluntariness of the relocation, the Court had ruled that the regulation of resettlement “is not in itself unconstitutional,” and that voluntariness alone is not contrary to the rights to life, health, personal integrity, nor to a balanced environment, provided that the resettlement continues to be executed through policies, plans, and investments that reduce risk in the Lower Zone of Belén and ensure dignified conditions at the destination. It added that the relocation presupposes coordination and planning activities and the need to allocate public resources that were not initially budgeted.

In resolution point 3, the judgment established as a binding interpretive criterion the preeminence of the Executive Branch regarding spending initiatives, pursuant to grounds 113 to 118, and the Court expressly departed from the criteria of grounds 177 to 181 and 190 to 203 of Judgment 984/2021 (Case File 00018-2021-AI/TC). The order was signed by magistrates Hernández Chávez, president; Morales Saravia, Gutiérrez Ticse, Domínguez Haro, and Ochoa Cardich, the latter as the reporting judge.

The order further recalls that, pursuant to Article 204 of the Constitution, the judgment declaring the unconstitutionality of a norm is published in the official gazette and the norm ceases to have effect on the day following said publication. The decision is significant because it makes explicit the expulsion of Law 31232 from the legal system and consolidates a precedent on the budgetary limits of legislative initiative regarding public spending, with effects on cases heard from the publication of the judgment onwards.

Source: El Peruano, Year XXII, No. 4456, October 21, 2026, Constitutional Processes, pp. 1-4 (official reference: EXP. N° 00018-2023-PI/TC).