Maria da Penha Law Now Covers All Gender Violence, Brazil’s STF Rules

Brazil · JUSTICE

In Tema 1.412, rapporteur and court president Edson Fachin anchored the ruling in the Belém do Pará Convention; within days, a Minas Gerais judge had already applied the new thesis to protect a municipal employee from a councillor.

Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously on 19 August 2026 that the urgent protective measures created by the Maria da Penha Law apply to every form of gender-based violence against women, regardless of whether there is any domestic, family or intimate relationship between victim and aggressor, in a landmark decision reported by the legal outlet Migalhas.

What the Supreme Court decided

Ruling in Tema 1.412 of the general repercussion docket, the plenary established that the urgent protective measures of Law 11.340, the Maria da Penha Law, reach any violence against a woman motivated by her gender, whether it occurs in the home, at work, in the community, in institutions or in politics. The decision is binding on the entire Brazilian judiciary.

The court fixed three further theses. Even a judge who lacks jurisdiction over a case must decide an urgent protective request when there is immediate risk to the victim’s physical or psychological integrity, forwarding the file afterward to the competent judge or, where one exists, to the specialized violence-against-women court. Protection expressly covers political gender violence, a crime under article 326-B of the Electoral Code that falls to the Electoral Justice. And police delegates and agents may grant urgent measures in emergency situations, under the terms the court set in ADI 6.138, limited to removing the aggressor from the home or shared residence, with judicial review within 24 hours.

Justice Flávio Dino concurred in full with the rapporteur and asked that the thesis mention political gender violence explicitly, a suggestion incorporated into the final text.

The case behind the ruling

The appeal, ARE 1.537.713, began in Formiga, Minas Gerais, where a woman reported being stalked and threatened with death for months by a neighbor who believed, or wished, that he had a romantic relationship with her, following her whenever she left or returned home. A lower court denied her protective measures and sent the case to a misdemeanor court; the Minas Gerais state court upheld the denial, reasoning that the Maria da Penha Law was restricted to domestic, family or intimate relationships.

The Minas Gerais prosecutor’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the restrictive reading violated international commitments Brazil assumed under the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence Against Women, the Belém do Pará Convention, which obliges the state to protect women from gender violence in any context, public or private. The court recognized the general repercussion of the question in August 2025, and groups such as the Brazilian Bar Association argued for the broad reading in oral arguments in May 2026.

In his vote, Fachin, who is also the court’s president, said gender violence is structural and is not confined to the domestic sphere, and that the central element is that the aggression is motivated by the victim’s female condition. He also stressed that protective measures are autonomous: they do not depend on a criminal charge, a police inquiry or even a police report, so the victim’s later retraction did not extinguish the case.

First application, within days

The new thesis reached a courtroom within a week. Migalhas reported on 26 August that an employee of the municipal chamber of Conceição das Alagoas, in Minas Gerais, won protective measures under the Maria da Penha Law against the chamber’s president, a city councillor, in what the outlet described as an application of the just-issued ruling.

According to the Minas Gerais prosecutor’s office, the employee reported episodes of psychological violence, moral and sexual harassment, threats and embarrassment. Prosecutors argued the facts went beyond an ordinary workplace conflict and indicated, in a preliminary analysis, gender-based violence. The judge ordered the councillor to keep his distance from the employee and to make no contact with her.

The case illustrates precisely the gap the Supreme Court set out to close: before the ruling, a woman harassed by a superior, a colleague, a neighbor or a political figure could be denied urgent protection simply because the aggressor was not a partner or relative.

Why the law matters

The Maria da Penha Law, in force since 2006, is Brazil’s landmark statute against violence toward women. Named for the activist Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes, whose fight to see her attacker punished took decades, it created the system of urgent protective measures, such as restraining, no-contact and removal-from-home orders, that judges must decide within 48 hours.

Until this month’s ruling, those measures were anchored in the law’s article 5, which ties protection to domestic, family or intimate settings. The Supreme Court did not rewrite the statute: it extended the reach of one instrument, the urgent protective measure, to the broader universe of gender violence, while leaving the specialized courts’ jurisdiction otherwise intact.

Brazil records some of the highest femicide and domestic-violence numbers in Latin America, and women’s advocates have long argued that the protective apparatus should follow victims into every space where violence finds them. The unanimous ruling, anchored in an international treaty Brazil ratified three decades ago, is the most significant expansion of the Maria da Penha framework since its creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• www.migalhas.com.br
• www.migalhas.com.br
• blog.mege.com.br

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