The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) marked a milestone in the corporate legal landscape by redefining workplace violence. Since its ruling issued in January 2025, practices such as exploitation, structural discrimination, and gender-based violence have transcended the realm of internal or administrative issues, becoming established as human rights violations with the potential to carry direct criminal consequences for organizations and their governing bodies.
The judicial decision represents a paradigm shift that significantly increases the legal risk for companies. Failure to prevent, address, or sanction these behaviors is no longer limited to reputational damage or labor contingencies, but can now imply corporate criminal liability.
“This change compels companies to migrate from reactive to proactive compliance. Negligence in preventing workplace violence is now an open door to corporate criminal liability, a scenario that until recently was unthinkable for many,” explained Héctor de la Cruz, partner at De la Vega & Martínez Rojas.
The new standard focuses on structural violence, that which is reproduced through organizational culture and policies. “From this perspective, a company can be held responsible for allowing, among other behaviors, excessive working hours without adequate compensation, ineffective protocols for reporting harassment or gender-based violence, or the absence of corrective measures against acts of discrimination for any reason. In this way, responsibility extends from the individual who commits the act to the organization that fails to implement effective control and prevention mechanisms.”
Workplace Compliance in Risk Management
With this precedent, companies become obligated to prevent, detect, and eradicate violence in the workplace. In practice, this demands an immediate review of compliance and human resources programs.
In this regard, it was noted that the “compliance” approach must shift from mere formality to a strategic tool for managing legal and criminal risks. “Coordination between Human Resources and the Compliance area is crucial to design and implement clear, functional internal protocols and diversity and inclusion policies that are evident in daily operations, conduct periodic diagnoses and audits to identify and correct risks in a timely manner, and train managers and staff in human rights and equality, verifying that the policies are applied effectively,” De la Cruz emphasized.
