What proposals is the Judiciary interested in approving in the new Congress

The renewal of the Chamber of Deputies and part of the Senate has rekindled the expectation in the Judiciary of approving new laws that interest ministers, judges and also court employees. Proposals of a salary, administrative nature and also related to the performance of magistrates have been presented or leveraged in recent years.

With new deputies and senators sworn in, magistrates mobilize again so that projects advance in the current legislature. Lobbying comes mainly from class associations, but there is also pressure from higher court ministers for changes in legislation.

There is interest in projects that increase the remuneration of judges and their employees, in a proposal to regulate social networks, in a proposal to make it difficult to impeach ministers and other authorities.

Check out the main demands of the Judiciary before the Legislature, by topic:

More salary increases

In December, the ministers of the STF managed to approve, in Congress, a project that increased the salary they receive and also that of all other magistrates in the country. At the end of the legislative year, shortly before the recess, the Chamber and the Senate approved, in a single day, an automatic readjustment in the remuneration of STF ministers for the next three years.

The subsidy increased from R$ 39.2 thousand to R$ 41.2 thousand this year; will jump to BRL 44,000 in 2024 and to BRL 46,300 in 2025. The increase benefits all magistrates because of the cascading effect: all have their remuneration indexed to the salary of STF ministers, which is the maximum allowed for all civil service. The cost is BRL 255.38 million in 2023.

There is a proposal in the Senate to amend the Constitution (PEC) to unlink the readjustment granted to ministers from the salary of other magistrates. The category is against, claiming “break of unity and isonomy” within the judiciary.

Still, magistrates want more. One of the dreams is to reinstate the “quinquennium” in Brazil, a trinket of 5% of the salary added to judges’ paychecks for every five years of work, which may exceed the civil service salary ceiling.

Last year, giving in to pressure from judges, the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), came to guide the proposal for a vote in plenary. Several other categories of servers began to pressure senators to receive the privilege. Without knowing exactly what cost this would have, parliamentarians asked for the postponement and the proposal was shelved with the end of the legislature.

Associations of judges and prosecutors, however, still want approval and are trying to articulate so that the proposal returns to the agenda. One of the ways is to get support from 27 of the 81 senators for the unarchive.

New impeachment law

At the end of last year, Minister Ricardo Lewandowski handed Rodrigo Pacheco a draft to create a new impeachment law, replacing the one in force, from 1950. The justification is to update the norm according to the principles of the 1988 Constitution, and consolidate changes in the rites made by the STF in the processes that annulled the mandates of former presidents of the Republic Fernando Collor, in 1992, and Dilma Rousseff, in 2016.

The proposal, however, if approved, tends to make it difficult to dismiss the president and also the ministers of the STF. The text excludes, for example, the crimes of fiscal responsibility for which Dilma was convicted; Representatives who repeated “fiscal pedaling” or other budgetary maneuvers to hide gaps in public accounts would be armored.

Magistrates would also enjoy greater protection, since a decision that adopts an interpretation of the law that may be considered incorrect or heterodox by other magistrates or in the future would not constitute a crime of responsibility.

Upon receiving the draft, in December, Pacheco said that he will transform it into a bill and will formally present it, to be discussed in the committees, later this year.

Regulation of social networks

Aligned with the new government’s interest in curbing threats and acts of violence against State authorities and institutions, Minister Alexandre de Moraes announced that he will create a commission at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to send Congress a proposal to regulate social networks.

He did not offer details of what he will propose, but indicated that he could be inspired by measures adopted last year by the Court, during the electoral campaign, to remove from the internet “known to be untrue” content that affected the legitimacy of the election – for example, texts or videos that questioned the integrity of electronic voting machines.

Among the measures adopted were the removal of ex officio content by the Judiciary, that is, on its own initiative, without provocation by the parties; the suspension of profiles or accounts on social networks with “systematic production of misinformation”; or even the temporary blocking of platforms that repeatedly failed to comply with orders of this type.

Another idea already defended by Moraes is to equate social networks with traditional media for the purposes of accountability for published content. Currently, digital platforms are only punished if they fail to comply with a court order to remove offensive content posted by a user. With the change, they could be held responsible for allowing the publication of this type of material. The minister and the TSE have not yet informed who will compose the commission, how the project will be and when it will be sent to the Legislative.

Structure of the Judiciary

A bill has been pending in the Chamber since 2017 so that all court fees – fees charged for filing lawsuits in the courts – are used for investments in the structure of the Judiciary. Currently, these resources are allocated to the National Treasury and can therefore be freely redistributed to public expenditures in accordance with the budget law.

The proposal says that other bodies already use the funds they collect for their own benefit. Examples of this system are Ibama, the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and Infraero. The objective is for the Justice to have more resources and for them to be allocated to expenses with internal programs to improve services, furniture structure, permanent material.