Vice President Sara Duterte sought the denial of the motion filed by the House of Representatives (HOR) to reconsider the unanimous Supreme Court (SC) decision that declared unconstitutional the articles of impeachment filed against her.

In her 27-page comment, Duterte said “the decision requires no factual correction: it rests on an unshaken foundation of truth.”

In its decision signed by 13 justices last July 25, the SC declared that the impeachment complaint filed by the HOR on Feb. 5, 2025 is barred by the one-year rule under Article XI, Section 3(5) of the Constitution and that it violates the right to due process enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

While the SC declared its decision final and executory, it accepted the HOR’s motion for reconsideration filed last Aug. 4.

Last Aug. 5, the SC required Vice President Duterte and the other petitioners in the two cases to comment in 10 days on the motion filed by the HOR.

Through the Fortun Narvasa & Salazar law firm, Duterte challenged the validity of the HOR’s motion as it noted that the HOR is not a continuing body and that it was filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) without approval by the members of the 20th Congress.

Duterte said: “Absent this approval by the plenary, the motion is unauthorized and legally infirm. It is a nullity that usurps the institutional authority of the 20th Congress itself.”

At the same time, Duterte said that based on the Orders of Business published in the website of the House from July 25, 2025 when the decision was issued by the SC until the filing of the motion on Aug. 4, 2025, the matter of seeking the reconsideration of the High Court’s decision was not submitted for the deliberation and voting of the plenary of the 20th Congress.

She branded the other arguments raised by the HOR in its motion as “mere diversions.”

These include the claim of the HOR that the due process requirements laid down in the decision are not sanctioned by the Constitution and “unduly interferes with its sole authority to conduct impeachment proceedings.”

She also countered the arguments that the SC misconstrued the chronology of events, in that the archiving of the first three impeachment complaints preceded the filing of the fourth impeachment complaint; its allegation that the SC wrongly stated that the fourth impeachment complaint was transmitted to the House without voting in plenary; and its claim that the Court erred in ruling that the prior complaints were effectively dismissed due to the adjournment of Congress.

While the transmittal of the fourth impeachment complaint happened before the archival of the three prior complaints during the HOR’s plenary session on February 5, 2025, Duterte said it is “misleading” to the supposed sequence.

“Contrary to the respondent HOR’s belief that the Court misunderstood the sequence of events that led to its disposition, the decision itself shows this Honorable Court’s unequivocal grasp of the timeline and the HOR’s maneuvers to skit constitutional limits, when it ruled that the HOR circumvented the One-Year-Bar Rule,” she stressed.

Also, she said the SC did not err when it found that the fourth impeachment complaint was transmitted to the Senate without a plenary vote which is required under the House’s Rules.

She also said the SC’s ruling was based on constitutional considerations pertaining to transmittal process and due process requirements.

Duterte added: “It must be remembered that when the judiciary mediates to allocate constitutional boundaries, it does not assert any superiority over the other departments; it does not in reality nullify or invalidate an act of the legislature, but only asserts the solemn and sacred obligation assigned to it by the Constitution to determine conflicting claims of authority under the Constitution and to establish for the parties in an actual controversy the rights which that instrument secures and guarantees to them.”