Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux suspended, across all of Brazil, every lawsuit challenging the Lula regime's provisional measure banning online betting, at the request of the prosecutor general, until the full court rules on the measure.
BRASILIA — Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux suspended every lawsuit in Brazil that challenges the provisional measure banning online betting, at the request of Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet, according to Gazeta do Povo, G1 and Estadão. The decision, signed over the weekend, takes effect immediately and holds until the full court judges the measure. “There is a risk of legal uncertainty due to the possibility of multiple rulings in divergent directions,” Fux wrote.
Gonet cited 14 cases as examples and argued that multiple lawsuits create “a picture of legal uncertainty and asymmetric application of the rule.” The English-language trade press, including Yogonet, counted 19 lawsuits halted and said the decision blocks operators from returning to the market.
The measure, issued by the Lula regime, has been in force since Sept. 25. Operators had until Oct. 5 to let customers withdraw their balances, and on Oct. 25 the government extinguished the operating authorizations, which had cost R$30 million each. The Fux decision came after appeals court judge Adriana Pileggi released three betting companies to operate, a ruling later suspended by the president of the regional federal court, TRF3.
Why it matters
The Lula regime banned a legal, licensed industry by provisional measure, without a vote in Congress at the outset, and the one forum where the companies could argue their case has now been shut by the decision of a single justice. That is a monocratic ruling, issued by one member of an 11-member court, that freezes a national debate. For American readers, the case shows how the Brazilian system works in practice: the Executive acts by decree, the Prosecutor General asks the court to clear the field, and one justice does it before the full bench has met. International operators who paid for licenses, and the investors behind them, now have no court to go to until the plenary decides, and no date has been set.
The record
What is documented: Fux’s decision and its wording, the 14 cases cited by Gonet, the dates of the measure, and the fact that the plenary has still to rule. What remains a matter of dispute: whether the ban is legal at all, which is the question the suspended lawsuits were meant to answer. The government argues the measure protects consumers. The operators argue they were licensed and that their rights were extinguished without due process. Neither side has had a court rule on the merits.
The pattern is familiar. Under the Lula regime, the Supreme Court has repeatedly acted as the final word before its own plenary speaks, and the party that loses is the one without a seat in Brasília.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: Gazeta do Povo; G1; Estadão; Yogonet; iGaming Brazil; SBC News.
Featured image: Luiz Fux at the closing session of the 2025 Judicial Year, Dec. 19, 2025 by Rosinei Coutinho/STF, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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