Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) suspended its judgment on the 1941 ban on operating games of chance on Thursday 6 August, after Justice Flávio Dino asked for more time with the file. The court agreed to take the ruling together with two constitutional challenges to Brazil’s fixed-odds betting law, which pushes a decision to November at the earliest.
The case is Extraordinary Appeal (RE) 966177, recognised as general repercussion under Theme 924. The thesis the court settles on binds every lower court in the country, and at least 2,728 cases are suspended across all instances pending the outcome.
Rapporteur Justice Luiz Fux was the only member of the bench to record a vote. He backed the continued validity of the prohibition.
What Article 50 covers
The provision under review is Article 50 of the Criminal Misdemeanours Law (Decree-Law 3,688/1941). Operating a game of chance in a public place, or a place accessible to the public, is a criminal misdemeanour punishable by simple imprisonment of three months to one year, plus a fine.
The appeal was filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio Grande do Sul (MPRS) against a decision by the state’s appellate panel for special criminal courts, which found that Article 50 was not received by the 1988 Federal Constitution and that operating games of chance was therefore no longer punishable. The STF has to decide whether the 1941 rule holds against the constitutional guarantees of free enterprise and individual liberty.
The court is not ruling on whether casinos, bingo halls or slot arcades can be licensed. Authorising those modalities would still require legislation from Congress. The STF will decide only whether the criminal prohibition can continue to be applied.
Fux votes to keep the ban
Fux started reading his vote on Wednesday 5 August and finished it the following afternoon. He said the prohibition protects public health, property and social welfare, and rejected the argument that it rests on moral or religious values or that it breaches free enterprise and individual autonomy.
Operators profit from people’s cognitive inability to assess the risks involved, Fux said. He added that the gambling industry uses artificial intelligence to map user behaviour and direct prompts that extend playing time, and he described online sports betting as a new and damaging commercial strategy. He also set the scope of the case: it concerns the commercial exploitation of gambling, not the individual bettor.
I would like to know where they got the idea that the Constitution did not uphold the Criminal Misdemeanours Law.
Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet argued for keeping the prohibition, and said any change to it is for the legislature to make. Regulating online sports betting does not remove the ban on other forms of gambling, he told the court.
All of this is included in the prohibition of gambling. The application of a fine to someone who is betting is also legitimate on the part of the legislature.
Dino pulls betting into the case
Dino agreed with Fux on the merits and said the 1941 law remains constitutional. He then requested a vista, the procedural device that gives a justice more time with the case file, so the court can address regulated betting in the same ruling.
I don’t see how to separate them, because a bet is a game of chance. If a game of chance is a misdemeanour, is a bet one too? We have to explain that.
Dino proposed that the eventual thesis set minimum parameters for any law authorising gambling or betting. Those included a share of tax revenue going to the public health system (SUS) for prevention and treatment of gambling addiction, restrictions on advertising aimed at children and adolescents, and measures against match-fixing. He also wants the ruling to state that lotteries, fixed-odds betting and other legally authorised modalities are exceptions to the prohibition.
Fux initially wanted the judgment confined to Article 50, on the grounds that folding in the betting law would pre-empt cases that have not been argued. Justice Dias Toffoli supported Dino, pointing to the growth of unlicensed sites and arguing that a blanket prohibition makes government oversight harder.
It is not only about the misdemeanours law. We are dealing with a disease that has invaded the lives of Brazilians, of all ages and social classes. Society is asking for broader treatment. It is a new world, complex and difficult, not the world of the 1940s.
Gilmar Mendes, the court’s most senior justice, said the vista would help the bench form a fuller view of betting. By the end of the session Fux agreed to check the status of the direct actions of unconstitutionality (ADIs) filed against the fixed-odds betting law and release them for judgment, so both sets of cases can be heard together.
Timing and what the industry faces
Court president Edson Fachin accepted the vista. Under the STF’s internal rules Dino has up to 90 days to return the file, which places the joint hearing in November. Fux had presented the case as a chance for the court to rule on land-based games of chance first and leave online betting for later. That sequencing is gone.
Licensed operators are affected either way. Brazil’s fixed-odds betting market opened under federal licences in January 2025 and generated about $7bn in GGR in its first regulated year. A thesis that fixes constitutional parameters for gambling laws would apply to that regime, and the two ADIs go to the validity of the law the market operates under.
The case reaches the plenary while the political pressure on the sector is already high. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for a ban on online betting platforms in April, and his Workers’ Party tabled a bill to prohibit fixed-odds betting the same month.
If a majority follows Fux, the 1941 prohibition survives and the 2,728 suspended prosecutions resume on that basis. If Dino’s approach shapes the final thesis, the court will also set out what a valid gambling or betting law has to contain, and operators licensed under Law 14,790/2023 will be reading those conditions closely. The 90-day clock started on 6 August.
Source: Supremo Tribunal Federal
