The Constitutional Court continues reviewing Supreme Court cases and finding reasons to strike them down. In today’s Diario Libre, Tuesday 23 April, the high court is reported to have decreed that there is no deadline for claiming parenthood, which is to say that a child may demand the right to his or her father’s last name. The court said that the action of claiming parenthood never expires. This decision stems from a case in Puerto Plata where two children born outside marriage were demanding the right to use their father’s last name despite the fact that he had passed away.
In the second decision the court decided that the payrolls, job descriptions and salaries of each person in a government office were public information. This partially reverses a Supreme Court decision from March 2012. Payrolls and salaries were to be made available under the Public Free Access Law.
However, the court did say that data such as flight schedules and radio communications between aircraft pilots and control towers were privileged information and were not to be released to the public at large.