On 17th October 2024, H.E. Rigathi Gachagua became the first Deputy President in Kenya's constitutional history to be removed from office by impeachment. The country watched. Kenya's courts have now spoken, and what they said has ignited a debate that will not be settled in a single judgment.
This was always going to be one of those cases. Not because of who the petitioner was, or because of the politics that charged every moment of the Senate trial, but because of the constitutional questions it forced into the open. Eighteen consolidated petitions. Nearly two years of litigation. And on 8th June 2026, a three-judge bench of the High Court delivered a verdict that will be argued over in lecture halls, chambers, and courtrooms for years. It upheld the impeachment. It also found that the process that produced it violated the Constitution. Both things are true at the same time, and that is precisely why this judgment matters.
The court's finding on fair administrative action is the most significant and the most uncomfortable aspect of what was decided. H.E. Gachagua's rights under Articles 47 and 50, the right to fair administrative action, and the right to a fair hearing, were infringed when the Senate refused to grant an adjournment in his absence and proceeded to conduct a trial without him. The court does not hedge on this. The violation is found, named, and placed on the constitutional record. The remedy, however, is not reinstatement. It is not the quashing of the Senate's resolution. It is constitutional damages of KShs. 50 million, payable by the Senate, awarded to vindicate the Constitution, restore dignity, and deter future violations.
For many Kenyans who followed every development of this saga, the late-night Senate sessions, the live broadcasts, the constitutional arguments traded across every platform, that answer raises a harder question: if a process can violate the Constitution and still stand, what is the Constitution actually protecting? Article 2(4) provides that any act inconsistent with the Constitution is void to the extent of the inconsistency. The court's answer to that provision is a doctrine it introduces as constitutional finality, the principle that once the Senate votes under Article 145(7), the outcome is self-executing and places itself beyond reversal, regardless of how it arrived there. That doctrine is new. It is clearly stated. And it changes the legal landscape in ways that go well beyond this case.
The court itself appears to know this. In one of the more striking passages in the judgment, it acknowledges that the tension between constitutional finality and the vindication of rights is live and unresolved, and suggests that a constitutional amendment clarifying the scope of judicial review in impeachment proceedings may be warranted. A court that has just delivered judgment on one of Kenya's most-watched constitutional cases, saying in that same judgment that the Constitution may need to be amended to resolve a question it has raised, that is worth pausing on.