demonstrated when he passed the competitive hiring process to fill the position.
Additionally, if performed by the victim, the position would have posed any risk to
public safety.
98.
The flimsy excuses made for the authority's decision to deny him public
employment are based on imprecise and stereotyped considerations based on his
status as a person with a disability or his temperament, and the Republic of Costa
Rica has not shown that access restriction was necessary for the proper functioning
of public service, nor even appropriate for preserving some compelling public interest.
99.
Thus, given that a discriminatory, hostile, illicit, process took place in filling a
public position and that it revealed a true official animosity toward people with
disabilities, the judgment declares the need to reestablish an equal legal regime and
ostensibly rejects the spread of the disastrous practice of ableism (illegal
discrimination based on a criterion of physical or mental disability), which is
profoundly contrary to the spirit and text of the Convention.
100. However, the judgment will only provide comprehensive reparation to Mr.
Guevara Díaz if this Court rules on violation of Article 26, the Convention’s principle
section on ESCER and, therefore, on labor protections.
101. At this point, it should be recalled that human rights—including ESCER—have
effects before the state (vertical effects) and before individuals (horizontal effects).
Although gauging the exact scope of the latter effect involves a deep doctrinal debate
and varies depending on the nature of the right and the scope of the protection
granted to private autonomy, the vertical effect is the most trivial and indisputable,
since it is related to the need to control the state’s tendency to abuse power.
102. Affirming that an individual is entitled to the right to work, in the dimension
of vertical protection from state arbitrariness, means, to a large extent, holding two
distinct positions: First, that the state cannot prevent an individual, duly accredited
under domestic law, to exercise a certain trade from working, as determined by the
authorities (negative dimension); and second, that the state, as the promoter of the
common good, does not have the authority to establish disproportionate legal
requirements that impede the exercise of a lawful profession freely chosen by an
individual.
103. Note that, by invoking mental disability as an element of discrimination to
deny the position to the victim without having demonstrated that the performance of
the work by a person with a disability would put public safety or the suitability of the
service at risk, Costa Rica has directly violated these two dimensions.
104. The scope of protection under the Convention of the right to work, with special
emphasis on the right to work of people with disabilities, was extensively developed
in the judgment,66 in accordance with the legal texts on the matter and with the case
law this Court has steadily developed.
105. However, I cannot fail to emphasize, once again paying due tribute to the
Court's case law, that this has been a recurring theme in its latest judgments, since
it was the subject of three of the Court's most recent judgments: Pávez Pávez v.
Chile (judgment of February 4, 2022), National Federation of Maritime and Port
Workers v. Peru (judgment of February 1, 2022) and Former Judicial Branch Workers
v. Guatemala, (judgment of November 17, 2021).
66
Judgment, para. 55-82
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