The 37-member Quezon City council has passed Ordinance No. SP-2660 naming a new senior high school after the late Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and the first woman prosecutor in Quezon City.
It approved the recommendation of the local school board to name the institution as Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma Senior High School.
“Justice Palma championed an independent judiciary, free from the clutches of political power so in honor of her legacy, we moved to name an important facility after her,” Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte said.
She said Muñoz-Palma was a key figure in Quezon City’s history.
Before her appointment as the first female SC associate justice in 1973, when she penned several decisions adverse to the late President Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law government, she was the first woman prosecutor of Quezon City from 1947 to 1954.
After her retirement from the court, she went on to become an assemblywoman at the Batasang Pambansa, representing Quezon City.
She also served as chairwoman of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.
The new building, located at Lot 14, Block 4, Gravel Pit Road in Barangay Payatas, is one of the city government’s school infrastructure projects under the K to 12 senior high school program. Rio N. Araja