Moraes Backs Gilmar in STF Vote to Apply New Special-Forum Rules Immediately

Overview

• Alexandre de Moraes joined relator Gilmar Mendes to affirm that the Court’s guidelines take effect at once in ongoing cases, including those with evidentiary phases already closed.
• The position extends the forum by prerogative of function to all authorities, reaching lifetime and career posts such as judges, prosecutors, courts of accounts members, the military and diplomatic corps when crimes relate to official duties.
• For authorities who held different offices in sequence, cases should be sent to the higher court to supervise the inquiry, with competence later confirmed or declined as facts are clarified.
• The relator rejected a general special forum for conduct during the electoral period premised on a future office, allowing only narrow exceptions where electoral offenses are connected to functional crimes that continue until inauguration.
• The dispute stems from a PGR petition on four practical issues, and the ongoing virtual plenary runs through December 19 as ministers enter their votes following the Court’s 2018 narrowing and a March 2025 recalibration of forum rules.