The president of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), Edson Fachin, issued a rule this Friday (2) to prevent lawyers from circumventing the court's lottery system and directing their petitions to a specific minister.
Fachin responded to a request from the president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), Kassio Nunes Marques, who sent him a letter on Monday (28) warning of the proliferation of this maneuver in electoral cases, as revealed by Folha.
In the controversy involving Nossa Senhora Aparecida, for example, the maneuver was used both by the actor Antônio Tabet, who took advantage of an old process by minister Flávio Dino, and by Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), who made a request within an appeal that was already reported by minister Luiz Fux.
The Solidariedade party also used processes already reported by Dino and minister Gilmar Mendes to direct their recent requests: one, for Kassio and minister André Mendonça to be removed from actions regarding propaganda in the TSE; another, so that Renan Santos could go to the Globo debate.
Fachin's resolution provides that, from now on, requests filed by those who are not part of a process are subject to validation by the presidency of the STF before being directed to a reporting minister.
If Fachin, with the support of the Judiciary Secretariat's technical team, understands that the request has no relation to the initial object of the action, a "free distribution" will be carried out, that is, a draw among the Supreme Court ministers.
The president of the STF may also assess that the request is related to a similar case that is already being processed in the office of a specific minister. In this case, it will determine the so-called "distribution by prevention".
In May, Fachin even signed an order providing that petitions made in cases already archived would undergo validation by the presidency of the STF before being sent to the reporting minister's office. The measure, however, did not prevent new maneuvers to choose a rapporteur in active processes.
At the time, the order was understood as a message to Gilmar. The dean analyzed a request from Maridt, a company owned by minister Dias Toffoli's family, made in a Covid CPI procedure that had been shelved for three years.
More recently, Gilmar endorsed the readjustment of Bolsa Família —made by the Lula (PT) government in the final stretch of the electoral campaign— by examining a request from the Federal Public Defender's Office filed in a process archived since 2024, and which dealt with basic minimum income.
Both Gilmar and Dino, in recent decisions, argue that the themes of the new requests are similar to those of the original demands. Therefore, according to them, there is no violation of the process distribution system in the STF.
With Fachin's new rule, which has no retroactive effect, this type of request will undergo prior validation. The president of the STF states that the measure seeks to improve transparency and organize the distribution system.
According to the STF, the rule "reinforces the constitutional rule that processes must be distributed randomly, through a draw among ministers (free distribution), preventing new requests from being automatically linked to a specific rapporteur".
