The Constitutional Court orders SERVIR to erase a permanent disqualification

The Constitutional Court declared the amparo lawsuit filed by Walther Javier Aguilar Armas partially founded and ordered the National Civil Service Authority (SERVIR) to nullify the permanent impediment to providing services to the State recorded in his name in the National Registry of Sanctions against Civil Servants (RNSSC). The decision is contained in Judgment 1473/2026, issued in EXP. N° 04346-2024-PA/TC, published in the Constitutional Processes section of El Peruano on Tuesday, October 13, 2026, pages 145-148.

A served sentence that continued to block access to public employment

The plaintiff was convicted of the crime of willful embezzlement by extension, a conduct provided for in Article 392 in conjunction with the first paragraph of Article 387 of the Penal Code, to the detriment of the District Municipality of Nuevo Chimbote. The details of the case, according to the judgment itself, are as follows:

• Sentence: four years of imprisonment, suspended for a period of three years.
• Disqualification: two years, as an incapacity or impediment to obtaining a mandate, position, employment, or commission of a public nature, pursuant to paragraph 2 of Article 36 of the Penal Code.
• Civil reparation: S/ 25,000.00.
• Conviction: Resolution 23, dated September 14, 2018, from the Second Unipersonal Criminal Court of Immediate Process of the Superior Court of Justice of Santa, confirmed by Resolution 37, dated December 20, 2018, from the First Criminal Court of Appeals of Santa, and declared final by Resolution 40, dated January 23, 2019.
• Rehabilitation: Resolution 82, dated December 27, 2022, from the Third Specialized Preparatory Investigation Court for Crimes of Official Corruption, Money Laundering, and Organized Crime, which ordered the lifting of the disqualification.

Despite this, SERVIR maintained the entry in the registry and rejected the request for removal. The entity argued that a conviction for a crime against public administration generates a permanent impediment, in application of numeral 2.2 of Article 2 of Legislative Decree 1295, a regulation published in El Peruano on December 30, 2016, and modified by Legislative Decree 1367, published on July 29, 2018.

The annulled administrative acts

The Court declared null the pronouncements through which SERVIR denied the lifting of the sanction:

• Official Letter 03747-2021-SERVIR-GDSRH, dated July 8, 2021.
• Technical Report 002544-2022-SERVIR-GPGSC, dated November 25, 2022.
• Official Letter 002732-2022-SERVIR-GPGSC, dated November 28, 2022.
• Official Letters 001443-2023-SERVIR-GDSRH and 001442-2023-SERVIR-GDSRH, both dated March 9, 2023.

In addition to ordering the removal of the impediment, the Chamber declared the claim regarding the recognition of damages and losses inadmissible, as it is a restitutory process, and ordered the defendant to pay the costs of the proceedings.

The criterion: disqualification cannot be indefinite

The Court concluded that SERVIR’s interpretation—extending the impediment indefinitely—ignores the principle of legality, the principle of resocialization, and the right to the execution of sentences on their own terms. The ruling recalls that the disqualification regulated in the Penal Code is temporary in nature, except for the express exceptions in Article 426, and that even perpetual disqualification can be reviewed.

According to the adopted criterion, the permanent disqualification derived from numeral 2.2 of Article 2 of Legislative Decree 1295 may be set aside by the jurisdictional body that issued the sentence after twenty years have elapsed, in a procedure in which it is verified that the convicted person has no criminal record for crimes committed during the execution of the disqualification, has no pending proceedings at a national level, and does not appear in the National Registry of Civil Reparation Debtors (REDERECI). The Court based this reading on the last paragraph of Article 69 of the Penal Code and Article 59-B of the Penal Execution Code, and cited its own jurisprudence issued in Case 01962-2021-PA/TC.

The resolution was issued by the First Chamber of the Constitutional Court, composed of magistrates Hernández Chávez, Morales Saravia, and Ochoa Cardich, the latter convened to resolve the discord arising from the singular vote of magistrate Monteagudo Valdez, who voted to declare the lawsuit unfounded. The presentation was handled by Morales Saravia. In the same edition of El Peruano, Judgment 1365/2026 was published, issued in CASE No. 00601-2025-PA/TC, which applied the same criterion to the case of Francisco Manuel Narrea San Miguel.

Impact

The ruling establishes a criterion on the scope of Legislative Decree 1295 and obliges SERVIR to review the permanent impediment annotations it maintains regarding persons whose penal disqualification has already expired or who obtained judicial rehabilitation. The decision benefits those convicted of corruption crimes seeking to reintegrate into the public sector and limits the interpretation that turned that restriction into a sine die sanction, although the Court itself specified that disqualification does not disappear solely by the completion of the sentence, but must be set aside by the competent jurisdictional body.

Source: El Peruano, No. 2026-10-13, Tuesday, October 13, 2026, Constitutional Processes section, pages 145-148 (official reference: Judgment 1473/2026, EXP. No. 04346-2024-PA/TC).