Brazil's top court sets 3 November hearing on betting ban
Justice Luiz Fux has called industry groups, football clubs and government bodies to a Supreme Federal Court hearing on the presidential decree banning betting in Brazil.
Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) will hold a public hearing on 3 November at 10:00 local time to examine legal challenges to the country's betting ban, according to iGaming Business.
The session, convened by Justice Luiz Fux and set to take place in the court's Second Chamber, was requested by the federal Attorney General's Office (AGU), by the parties behind Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) 8.027, and by outside groups admitted to the case as amici curiae.
At issue is Provisional Measure 1,394, signed by President Lula roughly a month earlier, which prohibits the exploitation, offering, intermediation and advertising of betting across Brazil.
Fux said during the country's elections that he would not intervene to stop the decree being read as interference in the political process.
In his order, he said the hearing could not wait, citing deadlines written into the provisional measure and the wider economic fallout for Brazilian football and other industries, which he linked to concerns over legal certainty.
The STF has previously convened a hearing on the broader effects of gambling, including addiction, and iGaming Business notes that the evidence gathered there fed into an earlier court ruling on games of chance, in which Fux stressed the harms linked to betting.
The provisional measure itself has drawn legal action from betting industry bodies, broadcasters and football clubs, all contesting its validity before the Supreme Court.
Two of those bodies, the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR), asked the court to suspend the decree altogether, arguing it is unconstitutional.
The AGU took the opposite position, asking the Supreme Court to keep the ban fully in force while also pressing for the hearing now scheduled, on the grounds that only the federal Union has the power to decide which lottery-style games may operate in the country.
Fux is already the rapporteur on a cluster of other cases that were examining betting regulation before the decree was issued, and he has folded the new hearing into those files as well, covering ADIs 7.721, 7.723, 7.749, 8.024, 8.028 and 8.035.
As a result, the hearing's scope stretches beyond the provisional measure alone and is intended to inform the Supreme Court's handling of the betting market more broadly.
Fux's order lists 26 participants due to appear, among them the AGU, the Attorney General of the Republic, the Ministry of Finance, the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism, the National Association for the Legal Security of Games and Betting, ANJL, IBJR, the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, the Brazilian Association of Criminal Lawyers, the National Confederation of Industry and the Brazilian Football Confederation.
Also named are a string of football clubs with standing in the case, including Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo, Cruzeiro, São Paulo, Corinthians, Ponte Preta, Vitória, Guarani and Portuguesa.