Judges brought requests from people with disabilities to Barroso – 02/12/2024 – Frederico Vasconcelos

Minister Luís Roberto Barroso, president of the CNJ (National Council of Justice), was sensitive to the requests of people with disabilities who felt excluded in the criteria of the first National Judicial Examination, as this blog revealed.

Barroso will submit to the CNJ plenary the proposal so that they have the same treatment given to black and indigenous people. According to the approved notice, anyone who obtains at least 70% correct answers will be qualified. For black or indigenous people, the percentage is 50%.

According to the CNJ, Barroso considered the claim legitimate.

In December, the Sankofa Collective of Magistrates submitted a request to the CNJ to apply the quota policy for people with disabilities. The collective is made up of 113 active first and second-degree judges from State Courts, Labor Courts and Federal Courts.

Here are some arguments supported by Sankofa to the CNJ:

– “It does not seem reasonable to explicitly demonstrate the ingrained ableism in society and which, day in and day out, not only this Council, but the entire national Judiciary, seeks to combat, relegating people with disabilities to oblivion and the impossibility of occupying positions of power.

– It is essential (…) to guarantee the fundamental rights of people with disabilities who make up the vulnerable group that has the most complete protection discipline currently enacted in the Brazilian constitutional system.

– Such suppression is not justified from any angle, especially considering the inclusive nature of public policies regarding quotas and/or reservation of places in public competitions.

– Maintaining the current wording of the normative instruments (…) people with disabilities will have made it difficult for them to access local competitions for entry into the judiciary career (…) which will certainly have an impact on the local competitions to be held and, This will possibly result in an even smaller number of final approvals and new judges with disabilities.

When Sankofa filed the application – together with five people with disabilities

– other requests on the same subject had already been distributed to the CNJ, without success.

In January, the group sent a letter to the Coordinator of the Enam Executive Committee, reinforcing the claim.

Public interest had been aroused by the message sent to the CNJ by Danilo Freire, a TJ-SP employee, questioning why the provision dedicated to black and indigenous people did not include people with disabilities.

A week after the approval of Resolution 531, which created the preliminary examination, lawyer Pedro de Rizzo Tofik requested the CNJ to suspend the contest injunctively. He claimed that regulating the matter through resolution was unconstitutional.

The national inspectorate, Luís Felipe Salomão, understood that the contested resolution “was not subject to constitutionality control through the proper judicial channels”, and it was not up to the national inspectorate to review this act. Salomão ordered the archiving.

The same understanding applied to another request, proposed by Rafael dos Santos Ferreira.

Former resistances

The previous examination of the judiciary brought to light the allegation that the CNJ intends to decide on everything, often going beyond constitutional competence. In this specific case, the main fear is that the judiciary is supported by the merit of its members, and whoever enters with a lower score could end up being a judge with less technical knowledge.

Barroso has for years defended the prior exam as a way of standardizing the level of knowledge of judges, better assessing vocations and eliminating favoritism.

Sankofa Collective of Magistrates, Rodrigo Zornitta Gaspar, Juliana Mottim de Oliveira, José Bezerra de Melo Neto, Cássio Jose Mendes de Freitas Vieira and Camila Bezerra Ferreira, represented by lawyers Vamario Soares Wanderley de Souza and Maria Gabriela Brederrodes Barros (who work pro bono)