STF Minister Restores Conviction Over Racist Comment After Coffee Refusal

The ruling treats jokes used to mask racist speech as criminal by allowing the words’ objective content to prove injúria racial without requiring proof of the speaker’s intent.

Overview

On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, Minister Cristiano Zanin of the Supreme Federal Court set aside a São Paulo appellate acquittal and reinstated a first‑instance conviction for injúria racial.
The episode dates back to April 2019 when a man refused a student’s offer of coffee and said phrases including “I also do not want to be your color,” which prosecutors and the lower court records recorded as explicitly racist.
Zanin ruled the conduct fits the concept of 'racismo recreativo' and held that the objective content of the remarks is enough to criminally qualify injúria racial without proving a deliberate intent to offend.
The minister cited a 2024 Inter‑American Court of Human Rights finding that faulted Brazil for failing to protect Black people, using that international jurisprudence to press for stricter treatment of discriminatory speech.
The reinstated sentence restores the original penalty of one year, six months and twenty days in open regime plus 14 days‑multa and signals lower courts may now weigh victims’ experience and objective speech content more heavily in similar cases.