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 and authoritarian censor of political speech.
Quick Read
- A Brazilian Supreme Court panel unanimously upheld Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ decision to block Elon Musk’s social media platform X nationwide for failing to name a local legal representative as required by law.
- The court’s decision counters efforts by Musk and his supporters to portray de Moraes as an authoritarian censor of political speech.
- X will remain blocked until it complies with the court’s orders and pays outstanding fines, which as of last week exceeded $3 million.
- The panel also upheld a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for using VPNs to access X, though one justice opposed this unless users are shown to be committing crimes.
- Brazil is a major market for X, with tens of millions of users, making the block a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between Musk and de Moraes over issues of free speech and misinformation.
- Musk has publicly criticized de Moraes and announced the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s decisions, aiming to provide evidence for his claims.
- The decision to involve a panel rather than the full bench may have been intended to depersonalize and institutionalize the ruling, according to legal experts.
The Associated Press has the story:
Brazil Supreme Court panel unanimously upholds judge’s decision to block X nationwide
Newslooks- RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) —
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 and authoritarian censor of political speech.
The panel that voted in a virtual session was comprised of five of the full bench’s 11 justices, including de Moraes, who last Friday ordered the platform blocked for having failed to name a local legal representative as required by law. X will remain blocked until it complies with his orders and pays outstanding fines that as of last week exceeded $3 million, according to his decision.
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 to 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. Its block marked a dramatic escalation in a monthslong feud between Musk and de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation.
“He violated the constitution of Brazil repeatedly and egregiously, after swearing an oath to protect it,” Musk wrote of de Moraes in the hours before the vote. He also announced Sunday the creation of an X account to publish the justice’s decisions that he said would provide evidence of his claims.
De Moraes’ decision to quickly remit his order for panel approval served to obtain “collective, more institutional support that attempts to depersonalize the decision,” Conrado Hübner, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sao Paulo, told The Associated Press.
It is standard for the rapporteur to remit a decision to a five-justice panel in such cases, Hübner said. In exceptional cases considered controversial, the justice has the discretion to send it to the full bench for evaluation.
Had de Moraes done the latter, two justices who have questioned his decisions in the past — and were appointed by former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro — would have had the opportunity to object or hinder the vote’s advance.
