The number of policyholders who went to court against the INSS (National Social Security Institute) increased in 2026, and the Judiciary has 4.5 million actions against Social Security.
In 2026, Justice across the country received 2.24 million cases against the institute, an increase of 21% compared to the same period in 2025, when there were 1.84 million new actions, according to data from the CNJ (National Council of Justice).
To stop judicialization, the Ministry of Social Security, the INSS and the CNJ entered into a partnership for the AceleraPrev program (National Program for the Reduction of Social Security and Assistance Litigation).
"The Judiciary is very critical of the INSS, because it has these 4.5 million cases. It doesn't mean that we are making bad decisions, it means that there are a lot of people going to court, throwing cases there. The CNJ numbers attest to this," Social Security Minister Wolney Queiroz told Folha.
The council's data shows that only 2 in every 10 cases (19.6%) requesting INSS benefits that reach the Judiciary are judged as valid, that is, that there is actually a right. A good part of them, 33% are denied, another 18% result in an agreement —"it's a draw"— and 27.5% are judged as other cases, which are cases without a solution.
The increase in the number of new actions against the INSS, however, has grown since the beginning of the council's historical series. There were 2.99 million shares in 2023 (+20.6%), followed by 3.33 million in 2024 (+11.5%) and 3.98 million in 2025 (+19.6%). In 2021 there were 2.20 million and, in 2022, 2.48 million. The increase is 80.5% in four years.
For lawyer Guilherme Ahmad Pedroni, the explanation would be in the negative responses from the INSS to policyholders. As an example, he cites retirements in which the institute's own simulation indicates the benefit, but the request is denied due to an alleged lack of a contribution period, for example.
Meu INSS offers a retirement simulator, but the tool itself indicates that it is just a simulation, not an indication of entitlement.
Marcel Cordeiro, partner in the labor and social security areas at Miguel Neto Advogados and doctor in social security law from PUC-SP, states that it is not possible to point out a cause for judicialization, but, in general, citizens seek the Judiciary when there is a negative response.
The lawyer also states that the TCU (Federal Audit Court) has already pointed out flaws in the quality of automatic denials. In an audit, the court identified nonconformities in 13.20% of the rejections analyzed manually and in 10.94% of the automatic ones.
For the rapporteur of the ruling, Minister Aroldo Cedraz, the root of the problem is measuring the productivity of servers by the number of processes analyzed. According to him, this could lead the server to opt for rejection as the quickest solution to closing a process and earning a productivity bonus. "There is an incentive for them to make efforts to reject the requests", he stated at the trial.
Denials affect citizens across the country. A 64-year-old man, homeless for 15 years, from Rio Grande do Sul had the BPC (Continuous Payment Benefit) denied by the INSS, but, in court, he obtained the benefit.
The institute rejected the request because it understood that per capita income (per person) exceeded a quarter of the minimum wage. However, his only income, according to social expertise, was R$600 from Bolsa Família.
The DPU (Union Public Defender's Office) filed the lawsuit saying that the man lives in extreme vulnerability, without income or support from his family. Furthermore, he has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and has been unable to work for over 20 years.
The 1st Federal Court of Cruz Alta (RS) determined that the INSS grant the benefit in a sentence published on October 2nd. For judge Tiago Fontoura de Souza, income above the legal threshold is not, in itself, proof that the socioeconomic requirement was not met, and the concrete conditions show poverty.
The benefit will start retroactively to July 2025, with payment of installments due since the application, corrected. The judge gave INSS 30 days to implement it, under penalty of a daily fine of R$100, limited to R$1,500. An appeal may be made to the Appeals Panel.
According to Pedroni, some of his customers also seek him out because of the service provided at the branches. He says that, in some units, employees advise citizens to resolve the request through the app, without receiving it. The public, however, does not always know how to use the device or have access to the internet.
Another problem is when the attendant does not have the patience to guide the beneficiary and treats him rudely or provides poor guidance.
In June, the Lula government set the goal of clearing the INSS queue by the end of September. At the beginning of the month, it declared "service without queue" because the stock (1.25 million) was below the monthly flow of new orders, although 235 thousand had been waiting for more than 45 days, a cutoff that the government used to measure the delay.
For Pedroni, the acceleration of analyzes "transferred the INSS queue to the Federal Court". CNJ data, however, still does not show the effects of judicialization from June onwards.
Cordeiro states that the acceleration of the queue coexisted with more decisions and a greater increase in denials than in concessions. He recognizes the reduction in stock and response time, according to government data, but says that, regarding the quality of the analyses, the only reliable support are the alerts from the TCU.
