Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas, who is running for re-election with the conservative Republicanos party, said on Thursday, September 17, that Brazil's Supreme Federal Court is divided into groups seeking self-protection amid a crisis involving members of the bench.
Speaking during a scheduled appearance in Itapetininga, a municipality in the interior of Sao Paulo state, Freitas said the judiciary was bleeding. According to the governor, the court, known in Brazil as the Supremo Tribunal Federal or STF, is going through an unprecedented crisis and the justices themselves must provide an answer to the questions affecting the tribunal.
Freitas said Brazilian society could neither imagine nor accept that the Supreme Federal Court would now divide itself in order to protect itself. He added that the public was seeing two blocs, or two teams, within the court seeking self-protection.
The governor also stated that judges must be investigated whenever questions arise over their conduct. He asked why magistrates could not be investigated or did not have to be held accountable, arguing that everyone has to be held accountable.
Dispute over Alexandre de Moraes and Andre Mendonca cases
The governor's remarks came two days after a session marked by disagreements among Supreme Federal Court justices during the review of cases involving two members of the court, Alexandre de Moraes and Andre Mendonca.
On Tuesday, September 15, the full court discussed whether the proceedings related to the two justices should be handled jointly. The session was suspended after Justice Flavio Dino requested more time to examine the case files, with the partial vote standing at 4 to 3 in favor of keeping the reviews separate.
Under Brazilian judicial rules, a formal request to examine the record pauses deliberation on a case so a justice can study the documents in detail before casting a vote. The Supreme Federal Court sits in the federal capital, Brasilia, and serves as the country's highest court and constitutional tribunal, with 11 justices nominated by the president and confirmed by the Federal Senate.
Political stances and market projections
Freitas attributed part of the current turmoil to political stances adopted by members of the court itself. He argued that if the Supreme Federal Court, the highest body of the judiciary, was immersed in an unprecedented crisis of that size, it was one the court had brought upon itself through political positioning.
He added that the justices had suddenly stopped behaving like the judges they are. The governor argued that the court needed to be thoroughly cleaned up, with transparency in investigating the facts.
Freitas also said that the crisis at the Supreme Federal Court has caused legal uncertainty in Brazil. In his assessment, the market already considers what he called Supreme Court risk in its projections.
He said it was unacceptable to imagine that Supreme Court risk was as important as fiscal risk in those projections, adding that the market was already pricing it in.
Calls for accountability and rescheduled court review
Freitas took office in 2023 as governor of Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous state and largest economic center, after serving as minister of infrastructure under former President Jair Bolsonaro. His remarks in Itapetininga followed comments he made the previous week, when he said the Supreme Federal Court was going through a crisis of credibility unlike any it had experienced before and called for investigation and accountability over the questions involving members of the court.
On Thursday, the governor again argued that the Supreme Federal Court itself should find a way out of the crisis. Concluding his remarks, Freitas said he hoped the court's president, Edson Fachin, would have the wisdom to guide the tribunal through a difficult moment so that the court could be cleaned up and deliver to society what society expects from it.
Also on Thursday, September 17, Fachin decided to reschedule the court's review of the case involving the conduct of Andre Mendonca, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, September 23. A new date has yet to be set.
