Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) is weighing whether to consolidate its cases on online betting, municipal lotteries and the gambling prohibition into a single joint hearing. The question was raised at a plenary session on November 4, where court president Edson Fachin said he was open to reconsidering his earlier plan to keep the proceedings separate.
Justices Flávio Dino and Luiz Fux both backed a broader examination. Dino said he was ready to return the gambling prohibition case to the plenary after taking it away for further study in August — his stated purpose being to allow the court to consider it alongside the betting matters. Fux, the rapporteur for the betting cases, supported the idea but asked for more time to prepare his opinion, saying the volume of challenges to the prohibition had substantially increased the arguments and submissions before him.
A joint hearing would bring together the challenges to Law 14.790/2023, which regulated fixed-odds betting, and Provisional Measure 1.394/2026, which subsequently banned the activity. The gambling prohibition's constitutionality under the 1941 Criminal Contraventions Law and the municipal lottery dispute would also fall within scope.
The municipal lottery proceedings carry particular weight for local authorities whose operations were suspended by an interim injunction issued by rapporteur Nunes Marques on December 3, 2025. At Wednesday's session, the federal government's legal office, the AGU, argued that municipalities lack constitutional authority to run lotteries and that decentralised oversight would create enforcement difficulties. Representatives of São Paulo and organisations backing municipal lotteries countered that local operations could meet federal rules and generate public-service revenue. The session ended after oral arguments; no vote was held on whether to uphold Marques's injunction, and no date has been set for that stage or for the proposed joint hearing. On November 3, Fux had convened a public hearing on MP 1.394/2026 drawing government representatives, sports organisations, betting-sector associations and regulatory specialists.
