Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds nationwide block on X

A statue of Lady Justice stands outside the Supreme Court in Brasilia, Brazil.

By David Biller and Gabriela Sá Pessoa

Sept. 2, 2024 2 PM PT

RIO DE JANEIRO — A Brazilian Supreme Court panel on Monday unanimously upheld the decision of one of its justices to block billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide, according to the court’s website.

The broader support among justices undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as a renegade who is intent on censoring political speech.

The panel that voted in a virtual session was composed of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including De Moraes, who on Friday ordered the platform blocked for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. X will remain suspended until it complies with the orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision. The platform has clashed with De Moraes over its reluctance to block users.

De Moraes also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access X. Some legal experts questioned the grounds for that decision and how it would be enforced, including Brazil’s bar association, which said it would request the Supreme Court review that provision.

But the majority of the panel upheld the VPN fine — with one justice opposing unless users are shown to be using X to commit crimes.

Brazil is one of the biggest markets for X, with tens of millions of users. Over the weekend, many X users in Brazil said they felt disconnected from the world and began migrating en masse to alternative platforms, such as Bluesky and Threads.

Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink is refusing to enforce the justice’s decision. On Sunday, Musk, who has thrown insults and accusations at De Moraes, announced the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s decisions that he said would show they violated Brazilian law.

But legal experts have noted that De Moraes’ peers have repeatedly endorsed his rulings — as they did Monday. Although his actions are viewed by experts as legal, they have sparked some debate over whether one man has been afforded too much power, or if his rulings should have more transparency.

De Moraes’ decision to quickly refer his order for panel approval served to obtain “collective, more institutional support that attempts to depersonalize the decision,” Conrado Huebner, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sao Paulo, told the Associated Press.

It is standard for a justice to refer such cases to a five-justice panel, Huebner said. In exceptional cases, the justice also could refer the case to the full bench for review. Had De Moraes done the latter, two justices who have questioned his decisions in the past — and were appointed by former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or hinder the vote’s advance.

X’s block already led De Moraes last week to freeze the Brazilian financial assets of Starlink as a means to force it to cover X’s fines, reasoning that the two companies are part of the same economic group. The company says it has more than 250,000 clients in Brazil.

Legal experts have questioned the legal basis of that move, and Starlink’s law firm Veirano has told the AP it has appealed the freeze. It declined to comment further.

Starlink told the telecommunications regulator Anatel that it will not block X access until its financial accounts are unfrozen, Anatel’s media office said in an email to the AP. Starlink didn’t respond to a request for comment.

That means a shutdown of Starlink is likely, although enforcement will be difficult given the company’s satellites aren’t inside national territory, said Luca Belli, coordinator of the Technology and Society Center at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. It is popular in Brazil’s expansive rural and forested areas.

Anatel President Carlos Baigorri told local media GloboNews late Sunday afternoon that he has relayed Starlink’s decision to Justice De Moraes.

Baigorri told GloboNews that the “maximum sanction” for a telecom company would be revocation of its license. He said if Starlink loses its license and continues providing service, it would be committing a crime. Anatel could seize equipment from Starlink’s 23 ground stations in Brazil that ensure the quality of its internet service, he said.

“It is highly probable there is a political escalation” because Starlink is “explicitly refusing to comply with orders, national laws,” said Belli, who is also a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s law school.

The arguments from Musk, who calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” have found fertile ground with Brazil’s political right, who view De Moraes’ actions as political persecution against Bolsonaro’s supporters.

On Brazilian orders, X previously has shut down accounts, including those of lawmakers affiliated with Bolsonaro’s right-wing party and far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy. X’s lawyers in April sent a document to the Supreme Court, saying that since 2019 it had suspended or blocked 226 users.

Earlier that month, De Moraes ordered an investigation into Musk over the dissemination of defamatory fake news and another probe over possible obstruction, incitement and criminal organization.

Bolsonaro is also the target of a De Moraes investigation over whether the former president had a role in inciting an attempted coup to overturn the results of the 2022 election that he lost.

Biller and Sá Pessoa write for the Associated Press. Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro, Sá Pessoa from Sao Paulo.