[Epilepsy as a cause of removal from the Armed Forces]

Recently, the First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice decided two important cases where the Ministers were urged to evaluate whether a provision of the Social Security Institute for the Mexican Armed Forces Statute making“epilepsy and other forms of seizures or equivalents” a cause of removal from the Army on the basis of “uselessness in the service” violates the equality and non-discrimination principle laid down in article 1 of the Federal Constitution. Four Supreme Court Ministers declared that the provision was constitutional. Justice Minister Cossío Díaz disagreed and wrote a separate opinion where he holds that the aforementioned provision is unconstitutional, since its excessively wide and undetermined language opens the door to declarations of “uselessness for the service” without ensuring this rests in every case in a genuine incapacity to develop a job in the Army.Before reaching this conclusion Justice Minister Cossío asked for information to the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery. It was on these basis that he sustained that the aforementioned legal provision does not satisfy an adequate means-end correlation, since it allows the Army to withdraw from service –on the basis of “uselessness”–persons whose medical condition is sometimes episodic; others curable; others, if not curable, pharmaceutically controlled; and, in cases where it does limit the kinds of activity, that the person can develop, it does so in a way that can only be determined by an intensely individualized basis.