STF Ministers Tell Marinho the Court Will Not Accept Structural Limits if Flávio Wins
By Hotspotnews
Brazil’s Supreme Court has reportedly drawn a line against the one check the Constitution still gives elected representatives over its members. On a GloboNews election panel, commentator Ana Flor said Senator Rogério Marinho, coordinator of Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign, was told by STF ministers that the Court would not accept “structural changes” if Flávio assumes the presidency. The message, as she relayed it, covered two points the opposition has treated as non-negotiable: impeachment of ministers and any expansion of the Court’s size.
The warning fits a longer pattern. Ministers of the STF are appointed, not elected, and serve until mandatory retirement. The only constitutional removal mechanism is a Senate trial for crimes of responsibility. For years that mechanism has been a dead letter. The president of the Senate decides whether a complaint is even opened, and complaints have piled up without a hearing. Marinho has said the current rite was written for a Court that did not concentrate criminal cases, electoral disputes, and budget control in the hands of individual ministers. His proposal is simple: if a fixed number of senators sign a request, the process opens automatically. In a September interview he put that number at 49 and said that, if he becomes president of the Senate, he will implement the change. He has also argued that criminal cases do not belong in a constitutional court and that monocratic rulings have replaced the collegiate judgment the institution was built for.
Flávio’s campaign has made the same case in public. The platform calls for confining the STF more closely to constitutional review, ending its original criminal jurisdiction over lawmakers, limiting single-judge decisions, and imposing a quarantine before former cabinet ministers can be nominated to the Court. On the trail he has treated a congressional majority as the means to amend the Constitution and has named Alexandre de Moraes, Flávio Dino, and Cristiano Zanin as ministers who should face removal. Marinho, after meeting Court president Edson Fachin on October 6, tried to lower the temperature. He said an eventual Flávio government would bring neither “revenge” nor a “spirit of vendetta,” and that the aim was to restore a real separation of powers. He added the clause the ministers appear to have rejected: the Senate would not be omissive if a crime of responsibility were indicated. His line was that there would be neither vengeance nor omission.
The GloboNews account suggests the Court heard the second half and dismissed it. As Ana Flor reported it, ministers told Marinho the institution “will not accept everything,” expressly including impeachment and more seats. No minister is quoted by name, and the Court has issued no formal note. The report is still the clearest signal yet that sitting members intend to treat Senate oversight of their own conduct as illegitimate. Earlier coverage had described Marinho assuring ministers that expanding the Court was not the plan and that the campaign wanted institutional peace. The newer account reverses the emphasis: the peace on offer does not include the structural limits the opposition has campaigned on.
That is the constitutional dispute in plain terms. One side holds that judicial independence requires ministers to be effectively unremovable by the elected branch. The other holds that independence was never meant to be impunity, and that a Court which intervenes in elections, directs parliamentary amendments, and shields its members from the Senate has already left the role the 1988 Constitution assigned it. Marinho has met Fachin, Gilmar Mendes, and others to argue for normalization. The reported reply is that normalization stops where accountability begins.
Nothing in the panel changes the legal text. Impeachment of an STF minister remains a Senate power. Changing the rite is a Senate decision. Constitutional amendments require congressional majorities, not judicial permission. What the message changes is the political forecast. If Flávio wins and the next Senate moves on the rite, the conflict will not be an accident of tone. By the account aired on GloboNews, ministers have already said they will not accept it.
Sources: Ana Flor, GloboNews election coverage, 7–8 October 2026; O Globo / Bela Megale, September 2026, on Marinho’s meetings with Gilmar Mendes and Luiz Fux; Gazeta do Povo, UOL/Agência Estado, O Tempo, and GP1 on the 6 October 2026 Fachin meeting; Veja interview with Rogério Marinho, 25 September 2026; R7 and O Globo summaries of Flávio Bolsonaro’s judicial proposals.
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