Brazil’s Supreme Court reconfirms 2005 law requiring government to pay basic income to those in poverty

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The majority of Federal Supreme Court (STF) Justices on Monday (22) confirmed the Court’s earlier decision ordering the government to set a value and start paying the basic national income to those in poverty, starting in 2022.

The decision, upheld in a virtual plenary session by 5 members of the STF who decided to follow rapporteur, Justice Gilmar Mendes, may have an impact on public coffers, but it will allow the payment in an election year.

In his vote, Justice Mendes rejected the government’s arguments challenging the feasibility of paying the benefit in 2022 and the risk of breaching the spending cap. The STF had already ruled on the matter in April this year, in response to a request from the Federal Public Defender’s Office, which called for the government to regulate a 2005 law that provided for the payment of the benefit.

In the decision followed by Justices Ricardo Lewandowski, Carmen Lúcia, Edson Fachin, Alexandre de Moraes and Dias Toffoli, the rapporteur argued that the legislation exempts the free distribution of goods, values or benefits by public administration in cases of public calamity, emergency, and social programs authorized by law and budgeted in the previous year, “provided, of course, that there is no disproportionate increase in value or persons benefited.”

Regarding the spending cap, Mendes argues that “contrary to what is alleged by the federal government… the fiscal consequences of the decision were thoroughly analyzed in the appealed decision, and the dissenting vote that incorporated economic-financial-budgetary arguments presented by the federal government prevailed.”

The basic income provided for by law should be paid in an amount “sufficient to meet the minimum expenses of each person on food, education and health, taking into account the country’s level of development and budgetary resources.”