Senator Alan Peter Cayetano and eight other senators asked the Supreme Court (SC) not to dismiss as moot and academic their June 11 petition which pleaded to declare null and void all the resolutions passed by 12 senators during their June 3 session.

The plea was contained in a pleading dated June 29, 2026. A copy was released to journalists by the SC’s Office of the Spokesperson late afternoon on Tuesday, June 30.

Cayetano and his group told the SC that far from being moot and academic, “the constitutional questions raised in the Petition dated 11 June 2026 continue to carry immediate and real consequences” as the issues “affect not only the parties and the institutional independence of the Senate, but also the legitimacy of official acts undertaken pursuant to the challenged proceedings, including the conduct of the ongoing impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Z. Duterte.”

“To leave these questions unresolved would create incertitude in the exercise of constitutional powers, cast doubt on the validity of official acts, expose public expenditures of funds to future constitutional challenge, and allow for issues that may soon re-emerge to evade judicial review through subsequent political developments,” they stressed.

The June 3 session with 12 senators present led to the election of Senator Sherwin Gatchalian as Senate President Pro Tempore and later as acting Senate President.

Then during the June 17 session with 13 senators, Gatchalian was elected Senate President with former Senate president Vicente “Tito” Sotto II as Senate President Pro Tempore.

In their pleading, Cayetano reiterated to the SC that the proceedings held by 12 senators last June 3 were null and void without the constitutionally required quorum.

Cayetano and his group said “the constitutional violations arising from the June 3, 2026 rump session was not cured when respondent Senator Gatchalian was subsequently elected Senate President by 13 senators during the Senate's special session on June 17, 2026.”

They told the SC: “To be clear, the Petition does not merely seek to determine who presently occupies the Office of the Senate President. Rather, it seeks a definitive determination of whether respondents (12 senators led by Gatchalian) lawfully convened and conducted the rump session on June 3, 2026, declared the existence of a quorum, elected Senate officers, reorganized Senate committees, amended the Rules of Procedure on Impeachment Trials in anticipation of the commencement of the impeachment of the Vice President on July 6, 2026, and exercised official authority pursuant thereto. Those questions, comprising the lis mota (the cause of the suit or action) the Petition, remain unanswered notwithstanding the events of June 17, 2026.”

They pointed out that only the election of the Senate President and Senate President Pro Tempore were undertaken during the special session on June 17, 2026 when there were 13 senators present.

“The positions of Secretary of the Senate and of Sergeant-at-Arms remain to be illegally occupied under a vote of a non-existent majority of the Senate on June 3, 2026, which conducted the challenged rump session and purported business without a quorum and without meeting the threshold vote of 13, i.e., a majority of all the members of the Senate,” they said.

They also said: “Recent and continuing developments involving relevant constitutional provisions raised in this pending case and the Senate of the Philippines prove that now, more than ever, the Honorable Court has to urgently resolve the dispute on threshold votes required under the language of the provisions of the Constitution.”

At the same time, Cayetano and his group said: “The subsequent election of respondent Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian on June 17, 2026 neither erases nor retroactively cures the constitutional infirmities that have attended the rump session of June 3, 2026. A subsequent political development cannot validate proceedings whose legality is precisely the issue submitted for judicial determination.”

Thus, they said the June 3, 2026 session and every act that purportedly emanated from it “remains an actual and justiciable controversy calling for the exercise of the Honorable Court's expanded power of judicial review under Section 1, Article VIII of the Constitution of the Philippines.”

“Ultimately, this case is not about who controls the Senate. Rather, it is about safeguarding the constitutional order from which all public authority derives and reaffirming to the Filipino people that no branch of government, however powerful or politically situated, is above the Constitution. Thus, the Supreme Court cannot hearken to the dictates of judicial restraint and reasoned hesitance for the simple reason that it is called herein to exercise its constitutional mandate,” they added.

Aside from Cayetano, the other petitioners were Senators Lorna Regina B. Legarda, Pilar Juliana “Pia” S. Cayetano, Jinggoy E. Estrada, Christopher Lawrence T. Go, Rodante D. Marcoleta, Maria Imelda Josefa “Imee” r. Marcos, Robinhood C. Padilla, and Camille A. Villar.

Named respondents were Senators Gatchalian, Paolo Benigno A. Aquino IV, Joseph Victor G. Ejercito, Francis Joseph G. Escudero, Ana Theresia N. Hontiveros, Panfilo M. Lacson, Manuel M. Lapid, Francis N. Pangilinan, Vicente C. Sotto III, Erwin T. Tulfo, Rafael T. Tulfo, and Juan Miguel F. Zubiri.

In their pleading, Cayetano and his group asked the SC to “give due course to Petition and, after due proceedings, grant the reliefs prayed for therein, including the declaration that the rump session of June 3, 2026, and all acts performed pursuant thereto, are null and void for having been undertaken without the constitutionally required quorum.”