Gilmar Mendes Votes to Strike Down Time-Frame Law, Sets 10-Year Deadline for Indigenous Demarcations

Overview

• Reporting as relator, Mendes voted to declare Law 14.701/2023 unconstitutional and ordered the Union to conclude pending demarcations within ten years.
• Justice Flávio Dino also voted to invalidate the law and stated that a constitutional amendment to impose the cutoff would itself be materially unconstitutional.
• The case is being decided in the STF’s virtual plenary through December 18, covering three ADIs that contest the law and one ADC that defends it.
• Mendes would keep procedural measures from the conciliation process, including participation by states and municipalities and broad public disclosure by Funai.
• His vote narrows indemnities for good-faith improvements to the period before the administrative act recognizing the land and rejects a ban on expanding demarcated areas in exceptional error cases, as the Senate’s PEC advancing to the Chamber pursues the cutoff in the Constitution.