Brazil’s Supreme Court pulls every iGaming ban lawsuit out of lower courts and under its own roof

The pattern that triggered it is easy to see in two back-to-back cases. On October 8, a federal court in Sao Paulo granted Stake a partial injunction letting it keep operating in Brazil through October 25, denying the operator’s separate request to run under its license through 2029. The Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region reversed that decision the very next day, acting on an appeal from Brazil’s federal government, arguing that letting Stake operate while every other platform stayed shut created an unfair split in how the ban applied.

CDA Gaming hit the identical wall weeks later. On November 5, a TRF-3 judge suspended the ban’s effects for three of the group’s brands, Casa de Apostas, Betsul, and Jogo Online, provisionally restoring their federal licenses. The court’s own president overturned that ruling the following day after a challenge from Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office, citing the same concern Fux would later formalize: letting exceptions through undermines uniform enforcement of the ban across the whole market.

Gonet’s request to the STF leaned directly on this pattern, framing the flip-flopping rulings as a threat to legal certainty given how high the stakes are for an activity the government has already deemed high-risk. With Fux’s order in place, operators lose the option of fighting for a temporary foothold through scattered lower-court filings, a tactic several platforms had used since the original lawsuits against the ban were first filed. Every dispute over whether the ban itself holds up now funnels into the Supreme Court, where four separate direct unconstitutionality actions are already pending, including ones filed by betting industry associations. The STF hasn’t set a timeline for a final ruling, and market participants are already bracing for the case to run into next year before anything gets resolved for good.