Gas Stations vs ASEA (and the importance of translating references)
In February 2018, ASEA issued a regulation for gas stations to implement a vapor recovery system, reduce environmental pollution, and prevent health damage.
However, such regulation included a list of essential references for its application, including 16 U.S. regulations in English without translation into Spanish.
As a general rule, foreign guidelines referred to by regulations must be translated into Spanish, except in the case of: (i) emergency, (ii) when the regulation is recognized as international industry practice and, (iii) when the target sector has a level of specialization that allows to understand them in the foreign language.
Some gas stations brought an amparo claim and the appellate court finally ruled they were right, considering that the regulation was not an emergency, since two years earlier another regulation had been published on the same subject.
In this regard, the court determined that the lack of translation into Spanish of the references violated the gas stations’ constitutional right to legal certainty.This amparo case gave rise to the binding precedent 2024758 shared in the comments.