Brazil Supreme Court considers joint hearing on betting and gambling cases

Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) is considering hearing cases on online betting, municipal lotteries and the prohibition of gambling together, following discussions between justices on Wednesday (November 4).

Court president Edson Fachin signalled the possible change during a plenary session examining ADPF 1212, brought by the Solidariedade party against municipal laws and decrees authorising local lotteries and sports betting. Justices Flávio Dino and Luiz Fux supported examining the related disputes together.

Fachin had initially intended to keep the proceedings separate but said he was open to reconsidering that approach following the justices’ interventions.

 Lawyers addressing the court had also referred to the previous day’s public hearing on the provisional measure prohibiting fixed-odds betting.

The proposed joint hearing would encompass challenges to Law 14.790/2023, which regulated fixed-odds betting, and Provisional Measure 1.394/2026, which subsequently prohibited the activity.

It would also cover the municipal lottery dispute and the case concerning the constitutionality of the gambling prohibition under the 1941 Criminal Contraventions Law.

Dino said he was ready to return the gambling prohibition case to the plenary after requesting further time to examine it in August. He explained that his request had been intended to allow the court to consider the issue alongside the betting cases.

Fux, who is the rapporteur for the betting cases, supported a broader examination but said he needed additional time to prepare his opinion. He said the arrival of challenges to the prohibition, alongside the existing cases against the legislation authorising betting, had substantially increased the arguments and submissions before the court.

The November 3 public hearing was convened by Fux to examine the impacts of MP 1.394/2026 and hear from affected sectors. Participants included government representatives, sports organisations, betting-sector associations and regulatory specialists.

The municipal lottery proceedings are significant for local authorities whose operations were ordered suspended in December 2025. In an interim injunction issued on December 3 that year, rapporteur Nunes Marques suspended municipal laws and decrees creating, authorising or regulating lotteries and sports betting, and ordered existing operations and related accreditation procedures to stop.

During Wednesday’s session, the federal government’s legal office, the AGU, argued that municipalities lack constitutional authority to operate lotteries and that decentralised oversight would create enforcement difficulties. Representatives of the municipality of São Paulo and organisations supporting municipal lotteries argued that local operations could comply with federal rules and provide revenue for public services.

The session ended after oral arguments, before the collection of votes on whether to uphold Nunes Marques’s injunction, according to the AGU. No date has been announced for that next stage or for the proposed joint hearing.