Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux restored an injunction ordering the removal of internet posts that falsely associated Senator Flávio Bolsonaro with attacks against Our Lady of Aparecida, the Roman Catholic patroness of Brazil. The ruling halts an earlier unilateral decision issued by Justice Flávio Dino and sets a strict 24-hour compliance window for online networks under the threat of recurring monetary sanctions.
The determination followed an urgent legal challenge filed by the defense team representing Flávio Bolsonaro, a candidate for the presidency from the Liberal Party. By granting the requested relief, Justice Fux overturned the individual stance taken by Justice Dino over the previous weekend.
Through this intervention, the court reinstated the enforcement directives originally issued within the Superior Electoral Court by Justice André Mendonça. Those electoral court mandates had explicitly required internet providers to take down misleading messages questioning the candidate’s stance toward the venerated religious figure.
Major online service operators including X, Meta, ByteDance, and Google were formally given a 24-hour deadline to enforce the suppression of the disputed material. Company representatives face immediate daily financial penalties if the designated URLs remain accessible across Brazilian territory.
The institutional clash is slated for a full judicial assessment before the complete bench of eleven justices in Brasília. Court administrators are preparing for an in-person plenary deliberation scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, 2026, to settle the jurisdictional dispute.
In analyzing the appeal submitted by the senator’s legal representatives, Justice Fux identified a procedural defect in the petition initially filed by media producer and humorist Antonio Tabet. Rather than submitting a new complaint subject to standard, randomized distribution among the court’s justices, Tabet had requested an extension of a prior ruling issued by Dino regarding former federal deputy Deltan Dallagnol. Furthermore, Fux stressed that validating verifiably false information during the final stretch of an election season directly threatens the integrity of the ballot.
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Addressing the broader implications of judicial intervention against disinformation, Justice Fux referenced the supreme tribunal’s historical enforcement measures to contest the rationale applied by Justice Dino. “Does it make sense for this Federal Supreme Court to mandate the dissemination of verifiably false news? No! From this perspective, the most authoritarian measures were adopted within the fake news inquiry (Inq 4,781) and the digital militias inquiry (Inq 4,874) under the justification of curbing disinformation, including personal coercion, arrests, and asset freezes,” Fux wrote in his dispatch.
Distorted legislative proposal fueled viral claims across digital platforms
The legal controversy emerged after online publications began asserting that Flávio Bolsonaro and allied conservative factions were coordinating a legislative maneuver to strip Our Lady of Aparecida of her official designation as the nation’s patron saint. The viral claims relied on a misleading interpretation of Bill 2,623/2007, an obsolete proposal introduced nearly two decades ago by former federal deputy Professor Victório Galli. That proposal sought to adjust the statutory definition of the national holiday on October 12 solely to recognize the saint as the patroness of Roman Catholics, but federal lawmakers permanently archived the initiative in 2008. Independent monitoring reports submitted to the electoral court documented more than 21 million digital impressions tied to the narrative across 2,086 distinct posts and 1,674 individual social profiles.
The dispute intensified when Antonio Tabet published a message on platform X on September 24, 2026, stating: “The militia family hates Black women so much that they decided to attack Our Lady of Aparecida!”. That publication prompted Justice André Mendonça, acting in his dual capacity as vice president and auxiliary propaganda judge of the Superior Electoral Court, to order the immediate removal of the statement. Two days later, Justice Dino accepted Tabet’s procedural petition and authorized the restoration of the content, maintaining that political satire and religious speech enjoyed constitutional protections because the post did not explicitly cite the candidate by name.
Sequence of judicial rulings leading to the Supreme Court reversal
- September 24, 2026: Antonio Tabet publishes a statement on social platform X referencing attacks against Our Lady of Aparecida.
- September 25, 2026: Electoral judge André Mendonça orders the removal of the post and forbids republications.
- September 27, 2026: Justice Flávio Dino overturns the electoral order and authorizes the reinstatement of the posts.
- September 28, 2026: Justice Luiz Fux suspends Dino’s injunction and reinstates the ban across digital networks.
Compliance deadlines and daily financial penalties imposed on social networks
The enforcement order reinstated by Justice Fux directly commands major technology companies operating within the domestic digital market to take swift action. Administrators at X, Meta, ByteDance, and Google must comply with the judicial notifications and suppress circulating copies within 24 hours of receiving formal court service.
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Should the platforms fail to satisfy the mandate or permit duplicate postings containing the discredited accusations, they face a daily fine of R$ 30,000 established under electoral regulations. Individual account holders and social media creators who persistently republish the prohibited claims will likewise face legal repercussions prescribed by Brazilian electoral statutes.
Full bench review scheduled under court leadership before national vote
The provisional suspension issued by Justice Fux will remain fully binding until the collegiate body of the Supreme Federal Court delivers a conclusive ruling on the underlying merits. Fux noted that allowing Dino’s single-judge ruling to stand unexamined by the full bench would strip electoral magistrates of their regulatory authority before voting begins. “The referendum on the decision was scheduled for an in-person session without a fixed date; if it takes place after the election, whatever the result, it will have lost its utility, which is an inherent prerequisite of urgent protective relief,” the justice pointed out.
Supreme Court President Edson Fachin is expected to submit the procedural conflict to the eleven justices during an in-person session scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, 2026. The impending plenary review will determine whether electoral authorities may enforce proactive removal orders against online disinformation when candidates face viral religious disputes.